TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Photo: Kevin O’Rourke
Major breach of college network went undetected for months
Photo: Samuel Verbi
The School of Computer Science and Statistics has confirmed that the eight-month-long breach was the action of an individual student. Seán Healy Staff Writer The School of Computer Science and Statistics (SCSS) is investigating a breach of its network after a studentcreated webpage facilitated access to Webcat, a restricted site used by computer science students to submit coursework online, Trinity News has learned. The webpage, hosted on a server run by to the Dublin University Internet Society (Netsoc), had allowed students to circumvent a departmental ban on access to the site outside of Trinity for eight months until it was discovered by SCSS administration on November 30th. It was visited over 20,000 times by 487 individual users, according to site statistics attained by this paper. The breach of Webcat, a software package used by students of its CS2010 module, Algorithms and Data Structures I, was first reported by Dr. Vasileios Koutavas, assistant professor at the School of Computer Science. “I rely on [Webcat] heavily to mark and manage multiple assignments in CS2010, offered to about 135 students each year,” he told Trinity News in a statement. “Thus the security incident […] only affected one module but it exposed very critical infrastructure for the operation of this module, as
well as student information and coursework marks.” In contrast to TCD Blackboard, from which computer science students receive no immediate feedback, Webcat provides students with an automated mark, generated comments and highlighted areas of problematic code. Furthermore, unlike most of College’s other websites, such as my.tcd.ie, which are available on the public web, Webcat runs solely as software on SCSS servers, operating from within the college network. Although Webcat is intended to be used only on campus, other services on the public web that can access it provided a loophole that could be manipulated to undermine the limited access. This meant that anyone with an internet connection and access to the webpage could have accessed the Webcat login page. The process is often metaphorically compared to piggybacking, allowing anyone to climb onto the back of services running from within the college network and be carried across the bridge to the restricted site. Exposure In opening the service to the outer network, zachd.netsoc. ie exposed Webcat to potentially malicious visitors. Within a closed network, denialof-service attacks from single or distributed sources, among
other common hacking techniques, are restricted. Allowing access to Webcat only on campus was a precautionary measure that allowed Dr. Koutavas to limit site visitors to the software installed on college machines, or on devices connected to TCD wifi. A connected device would relay the college username of someone, should they launch an attack, to ISS. In the open, Webcat could have been bombarded with visits from multiple computers, running programmes specializing in purposely repetitious tasks. If an attack succeeded and revealed site infrastructure or student information, the perpetrator would likely be untraceable, as hackers often use IP rerouting software and web browsers tailored for anonymity – none of which are installed on college computers. Investigation Trinity News understands that the third-year computer science student behind the webpage was contacted by SCSS shortly after it had been discovered. Gerry O’Brien, the SCSS systems manager, confirmed in a statement to Trinity News that the breach was the action of a single student and that access to the site was blocked at 11:45pm on November 30th, three hours after Dr. Koutavas contacted SCSS administration.
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In opening the service to the outer network, zachd.netsoc.ie exposed Webcat to potentially malicious visitors.
E-mail and e-commerce services – like the ones Trinity and other universities use – trust the strength of their security on the public web. As Dr. Koutavas and SCSS administration have not been able to, or have chosen not to, establish the necessary security precautions without limiting access to Webcat, students unable to access services like VPN are required to submit digital assignments on campus. In a statement to Trinity News, Netsoc stated, “[Our] system administrators responded by immediately disabling this website and analysing the source code to determine its function and potential security risk. It was concluded that this website did circumvent security restrictions imposed by SCSS on their network and, as such, was in breach of the Codes of Conduct for having websites hosted in College. Netsoc system administrators contacted [SCSS] to relay the conclusions of their analysis.” In 2011, a Trinity student received national media attention for allegedly compromising an FBI computer and HB Gary Inc. servers. However, the student implicated in this investigation made no attempt to conceal zachd. netsoc.ie and advertised the service to fellow students on at least one occasion.
Comment p.13
Inside
TN2 GOES BACKSTAGE WITH TINKERBELL AT THE PANTO; IRELAND’S LEADING CHOCOLATIERS SPILL THE COCOA BEANS; AND WE DELVE DEEP INTO INDEPENDENT DUBLIN BOOKSHOPS.
Dylan Lynch looks at the science behind birth control.
Will Earle A’Hern dissects Trinity’s culture of cuts.
Bláithín Sheil meets John McLean and Trinny the cat.
Features p.7
“[Webcat] was password protected and was not compromised,” O’Brien said. “The lecturer did not want his site available externally.” Netsoc, he told Trinity News, “immediately shut down the site that was providing the external access” and College’s security officer was informed of the breach. “All potential security matters are taken seriously by the School and thoroughly investigated,” he added, saying that the School “are happy with the co-operation which [it has] received from NetSoc.”
SciTech p.19
Alicia Lloyd talks to Stephanie Roche about that goal.
Sport p. 24
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
News
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What They Said
“ “ “ “ You’re invited to my birthday if i’ve liked your photos on Instagram. - Matthew Mulligan, @_mattuna
It is really funny how essays don’t progress by sitting on library couches trying to decide whether to resurrect fringe from c. 2013.
- Naoise Dolan, @naoisedolan
Trinity sending shit about payroll to everyone instead of just staff. Like surely you have separate mailing lists for that shit.
A lady giving a tour of college reaches the Hamilton “and this is where. . . science stuff happens”. Fairly accurate actually. - Luke McGuinness, @lmacguinness
- Swilla Black, @TinnocentBoy
Move to broaden criteria for LGBT rights officer criticised
“ D. Joyce-Ahearne Deputy Editor A discussion item due to be raised by SU welfare officer, Ian Mooney, with the backing of SU president, Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne, at this evening’s SU Council has been criticised by prominent members of Trinity’s LGBT community for potentially leading to the criteria for the union’s LGBT rights officer being widened. Trinity News has learned that the two sabbatical officers originally intended to raise the issue as a motion, which would be voted on at Council, but abandoned the idea after being met with opposition from several elected student representatives from the queer community. Currently, according to the union’s constitution, the LGBT rights officer must identify as being LGBT (either lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans*).
Implications
One of the possibilities of broadening the criteria of the role of LGBT rights officer could be that students who do not identify as queer could be elected to the position. The possibility of having a cisgender heterosexual rights officer (a straight student whose chosen gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth) who represents the queer community has been one reason for opposition from the queer community to the proposed change. However, the main issue is the means by which the issue has been brought into the public forum, whereby there has been minimum input sought from the queer community. Stephen Hatton,last year’s SU LGBT rights officer, has expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed discussion item, seeing it as a push for a motion that would effectively remove the requirement for the LGBTRO to identify as queer and therefore “remove one of the very few privileges the queer community rely on”. The position “exists for the LGBTQI community of College and only this community can decide the scope and requirements of the role,” he said. “By bringing the discussion item to Council, Domhnall and Ian are actively ignoring the strong protestations of prominent queer representatives in College and offering this discussion up to a heterosexual majority. Any real consultation of the queer community has been lacking, which the sabbats are well aware of.”
Grievances
For Hatton, that the decision would be taken by Council, a body with a large cisgender heterosexual majority, is a bone of contention. “Union Council ensures that the queer voice is a distinct minority, in a decision which affects LGBTQI students solely,” he said. “Some queer voices may well be heard during the discussion item, but the forum that is Council guarantees that a marginalised community will remain marginalised and underrepresented in the discussion and or motion which affects them alone; whereby the straight cisgender:queer student ratio at Council couldn’t be more than 70:30, if even.” He added: “I feel robbed and alienated by my own union; a union which boasts of its progressive student body, its inclusive ideals and its proud history of LGBTQI activism and advocacy. Something like this shouldn’t even be an issue but it is now, thanks to ignorance and the marginalizing of a minority voice in a discussion of the representation of the LGBTQI minority.
I feel robbed and alienated by my own union; a union which boasts of its progressive student body, its inclusive ideals and its proud history of LGBTQI activism and advocacy. SU response
When asked by Trinity News if he thought it appropriate that an issue that exclusively affects the rights of queer students be debated on and decided by an institution (Council) that has a huge straight majority, SU president McGlacken-Byrne responded: “Yes.” Mooney responded to criticism by saying that the discussion item is not about “removing the need to identify as LGBT”, but rather about “discussing the stipulations about running for the LGBTRO position.” Mooney stated that currently the criteria for rights officer are open only to those who identify as LBGT, meaning that cisgender heterosexual students are not the only members of the student body who are excluded from running: “If people would like to focus on discussing whether or not to remove the need to identify as LGBT, that’s up to them,” he said.” If people would like to focus on broadening the field of things you can identify [as], such as adding in that you may identify as queer, intersex, or asexual for example (as currently anyone who identifies as these also can’t be nominated), that’s up to them. I’m suggesting nothing, just facilitating discussion.” Mooney went on to state that he believed Council was an appropriate forum for this discussion.“Council is a place where things can be debated and discussed,” he said. “I absolutely do think it is appropriate that things be discussed openly and everyone is given the opportunity to give their opinion.” Hatton has also criticised the discussion item on the grounds of it being a push for a subsequent motion on the issue. “There is a major fault in the proposed process of using this discussion item to initiate a motion to change the constitution at this Special Council,” he said. “This mechanism is only intended to remove and correct oversights or errors in a new TCDSU constitution. It is not a way to change the spirit or meaning of anything in the constitution when it was accepted in its original form presented in the previous referendum.” He added: “If this discussion item were to lead to any motion regarding the requirements of the LGBTRO officership it would undeniably change the spirit and meaning of the position of LGBTRO and a change like this cannot therefore be ratified by this special council. I think this is not known by many people, including the sabbats who propose to abuse this mechanism and make significant changes to the constitution. The electoral commission will be responsible for recognising the unconstitutionality of any proposed motion which changes the spirit of meaning behind the constitution as it was when adopted by referendum in April 2014.” When it was put to McGlacken-Byrne if the decision to raise the subject as a discussion itemwas an attempt to initiate a motion, he responded: “No, it’s an attempt to get feedback from more than the limited few people hereto involved in the conversation about a multifaceted issue that affects both straight and LGBT students.”
85% increase in Niteline calls James Prendergast Investigative Correspondent Calls to Niteline – the “confidential and anonymous listening service” run by students from Trinity and other third level institutions in the Dublin area – have risen by 85% in the past year, Trinity News has learned. Niteline co-ordinator Karen Mulligan told Trinity News that 58% of calls have been via the online listening service and 42% by phone. 56% of calls were classified under mental health, 12% under relationships, 11% under college and 3% each under accommodation and general conversation. A more detailed breakdown of calls reveals that 13% are classified under anxiety, 11% under de-
pression, suicide at 8% and both loneliness and stress at 7%. The categories of body image and eating disorder, accommodation, self-harm and general conversation categories make up 3% each, with the remainder of calls filed under mental health. Mulligan emphasised that the detailed breakdown is only a very rough guide given that most calls “involve many subjects.” Niteline is open every night during term from 9pm to 2.30am and calls can last up to two hours. Calls peak in the first hour of the services with 26 percent occurring between 9pm and 10pm and only five percent between 2am and 2.30am. 55% of calls last less than half an hour, 17% between half an hour and an hour, 10% between an hour and an hour and a half, rising to 19% between an hour and
a half and two hours. Calls have tended to increase throughout the previous two academic years, with a dip around December. Mulligan told Trinity News that the increase is a combination of both Niteline’s own publicity efforts, especially their articles published on campus.ie and of complementary services such as ‘Please Talk’. “Please talk and other organisations such as Headstrong are definitely having an effect on breaking down the barriers in seeking help with regard to mental health issues and that’s definitely reflected in our service,” she said. She also credited SU welfare officer, Ian Mooney, and his predecessor Stephen Garry. “In Trinity, I think Ian and Stephen before him have had a great impact with their campaigns on campus in reducing stigma sur-
rounding mental health,” she said. Ian Mooney told Trinity News that bureaucracy, resources and logistics had “bested” his plans for a 24-hour online instant messaging system. While he said that he has considered alternatives, such as apps, he will continue promoting Niteline’s messenger system. “They’ve really improved things on how the service is being run and the numbers show that,” he said. Students wishing to contact Niteline can freephone them on 1890 793 793 or visit their website, www.niteline.ie.
By NUMBERS:
56%
Mental health
12% Relationships
11% College
Web Summit founder warns students they are living in ‘last decade of professional class’ Andrew O’Donovan Staff Writer Trinity alumnus and Web Summit founder Patrick Cosgrave warned students that they are living in the “last decade of the professional class” at an event hosted by the Phil and Trinity Entrepreneurial Society on Wednesday. He said that Rapid advances in artificial intelligence will mean that the jobs of lawyers and doctors, previously seen as secure, would soon be performed by computers, presaging a “daunting future.” He insisted that there was “no better time to join a start-up” than when in or just after college – when one has “freedom to do things” and doesn’t have family constraints. One thing that those in Silicon Valley have more in common than any other, he said, is that they have all “failed more than they’ve succeeded”, and that even in hugely successful ventures like Facebook, there are many internal failures. There is a “huge amount of luck along the way” and “attrition rate is extreme.” He said that there is rarely “such thing as an entirely new idea,” giving Facebook as an example of an idea that “was just executed better.” He was positive about what he described as a “vibrant and interesting ecosystem” of tech startups in Dublin, but was sceptical
of the benefit to “indigenous tech” of having multinational tech companies headquartered here. He said that the Irish-based employees of such companies as Google and Facebook are principally involved in customer support and sales roles – “skills not useful to startups until they have reached 200 or 300 employees.” Concerning the types of people Web Summit employs, Cosgrave said that they hire a “diverse range of people,” from engineers and data analysts to arts students, but that a key feature is that they are “affable and enthusiastic” with “great interpersonal skills.” He gave an anecdote of a nineteen year old intern who was asked to set up a conference call with the CEO of McKinsey, a prestigious American consulting company. This intern was “completely fearless” talking to such a senior figure who was oblivious to his young age – “those are types of people we hire.” Much furore was caused earlier this year when Web Summit advertised that it would only accept applications for internships from those with first class degrees from a university or an uppersecond from Trinity. Cosgrave indicated that it had been orchestrated so as to gain publicity and that such a stipulation hadn’t deterred the types of people that Web Summit seeks to hire, who boldly applied regardless. Cosgrave, who studied BESS
and graduated in 2005, said he “wasn’t the best student,” didn’t go to lectures and crammed for exams. He was president of the Phil, edited the Piranha, and worked on a number of startups – a social network that was canned when Facebook came along, a viral invite system, and a “silly” advertising platform. After graduating he was involved in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful Democratic nomination campaign and founded MiCandiate, an online platform that profiled candidates running for election in 2007. His intention was to introduce a premium service to generate revenue, but it “turned out to be a terrible idea,” and it was after that failure that he “stumbled into organising the Web Summit.” The Web Summit has increased in size from 500 in 2010 to 22,000 in 2014, and Cosgrave foresees 35,000 attending in 2015. In response to a question about whether such exponential growth in attendance could have a negative effect on the experience of attendees, he said that “the larger the conference the higher the probability” that they will make beneficial connections. He was very candid in admitting that “a large proportion of the start-ups (in attendance) will be out of business.”
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
News
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Bible retained in revised Trinity logo
Catherine Healy Editor The clasped bible scrapped from the revised Trinity logo criticised by staff and students in March has been reinstated
as part of new visual identity proposals due to be presented to Trinity board members on December 19th. The latest logo prototype has been reworked to more accurately reflect the original components of the university shield and will retain the name “Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin”. The revision follows criticism of the original prototype given preliminary approval by board members in March. The logo then presented to board had removed the original five-colour scheme including blue and gold in an effort to move away from the combination of colours associated with brands like Ryanair and Ikea. The proposed blue and white alternative saw the closed bible that had tradition-
ally featured in Trinity’s crest being replaced by open book to “signify the tradition of scholarship which should be accessible to all”, while retaining the lion, harp and castle. The revised logo had also replaced the name “Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin” with “Trinity College, the University of Dublin”. Several senior academics had been particularly vocal in their criticism of the logo change, and an online petition calling on the provost and board “to refrain from altering the College name and coat of arms” was signed by over 1,800 people. While the components of the original Trinity logo will be retained in this new version, the blue and white scheme used in the revision criticised last year
will not be changed. However, the traditional five-colour logo will be available on request for ceremonial occasions. If the revised visual identity is approved by board, an identity guidance governing group will meet twice a year to review applications for use of the traditional crest. The visual identity proposals have been overseen by a working group chaired by College’s registrar, Professor Shane Allwright. Among the criteria laid down in response to feedback were the need to retain the heraldry in the original Trinity shield, ensure its shade of blue is reflective of the Trinity blue and restore the name “Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin”. The group has consulted with 30 groups of students, staff, fellows and alumni
about the revised proposals over the last six months, according to an email sent to students earlier this month. Once the new logo is finalised, the working group intends to establish an online portal that would make available it available to download for use in materials such as presentations, signage, event materials and letters. Work on a new Trinity logo began in August 2013 as part of College’s identity initiative scheme. Its aim, Provost Patrick Prendergast had said in an email to students in November 2013, was “to create a shared visual identity and narrative for the entire university” that will allow it “to tell a more cohesive and powerful story about what Trinity wishes to achieve in the future.”
STUDENTS’ UNION REVIEW
As the first term of the academic year draws to a close this week, our staffers assess the performance of SU sabbatical officers so far.
President: Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne
Women still under-represented in senior university positions
Fionn McGorry Deputy News Editor Data released last week by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) indicate that, despite holding a majority of undergraduate places at Trinity, women are still significantly under-represented in senior academic posts in the university. 67% of senior posts in Trinity are held by men, while women make up only 14% of professors. However, Trinity has fared better for gender representation than most other third-level institutions, being the only university to have more than 30% of senior
academic posts held by women, compared with 21% at NUI Galway, 27% at UCC and DCU, 28% at Maynooth University and 29% at UCD. Only St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, a DCU college, bucks the trend among with a 50:50 split between men and women in senior posts. While 86% of professorial roles in Trinity are held by men, 49% of lecturers, 38% of senior lecturers, and 45% of associate professors at the university. The position of professor has traditionally been one held by some of the most senior members of a department by age, which may account for the contrast between the figures. Statistics for the University of Limerick, established in 1972, which has the highest percentage of female professors, indicate that structural barriers to career advancement that may be prevalent in older universities could be an explanation, though this does not wholly account for the overall poor performance in this survey of Maynooth University, which, although a successor to St Patrick’s College, established in 1795, became a iniversity only in 1997. Of all higher education institutions, only Dún Laoghaire In-
stitute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) has a majority of women (55%) in senior roles. Overall, institutes of technology had an average of 29% of senior roles filled by women. Of the non-university third-level colleges, St. Angela’s College, Sligo, and the National College of Art and Design were the best performers, with women making up 86% of lecturers and 67% of senior lecturers at St Angela’s, and 61% of lecturers and 47% of senior lecturers at NCAD. Responding to a question from Trinity News about what Trinity does to encourage participation of women in the workplace, college press officer, Caoimhe ní Lochlainn, stated that it “acknowledges the need to improve gender balance in representation,” citing measures in place such as “an annual Equality Monitoring Report, prepared by the Monitoring Advisory Group and presented to Board, that examines the diversity of the College community.” This report focuses on “gender representation across the different levels of academic staff” and will allow Trinity “to identify particular areas of College that experience a pronounced gender imbalance and identify appropriate actions
to be taken,” she said. The Strategic Plan 2014-19 launched last month by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny commits the College to “[advance] a structural change process to incorporate gender-balanced representation at all stages and levels, thereby enhancing the quality of Trinity’s institutional decision-making”. It also commits College to introducing the Athena SWAN Charter, which promotes good employment practices for female academics in STEMM, to Ireland. Ní Lochlainn told Trinity News that College’s desire to introduce this charter to Ireland “represents Trinity’s intention to pioneer a proven means of promoting and retaining women in the STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) fields in Ireland, thus improving our own standards while also raising the bar for other Irish institutions.” Asked about what facilities exist for academic staff who are parents, Ní Lochlainn drew attention to the INTEGER (Institutional Transformation for Effecting Gender Equality in Research) Project, whose Baseline Data Report in 2013 indicated that the College should
“introduce one-term sabbatical leave for academics returning from long-term leave”, a measure that was adopted by the Faculty Executive of the School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science on 28 October 2014 for a two-year pilot. The move allows those returning from a variety of leave programmes to focus entirely on research for a period of one academic term, relieving them of teaching or administrative duties.
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67% of senior [academic] posts in Trinity are held by men, while women make up only 14% of professors.
Student hardship fund has ‘ran out of money’ James Prendergast Investigative Correspondent The student hardship fund effectively ran out of money recently, it has been claimed. SU Ents officer, Finn Murphy, told Trinity News that the fund is now running on ¤2,000 received from the alumni office and ¤1,000 from the sale of Ents wristbands. “As far as I’m aware, it hasn’t happened this early in the term before,” he said in relation to the shortfall. In an email to Trinity News, welfare officer Ian Mooney said that College has pledged but has yet to donate ¤150,000 to the fu-
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College has yet to donate ¤150,000 to the fund.
nd. About 70% of SAF funds is given to Trinity Access Programme and the rest to the hardship fund. The fund – which is co-funded by both the Irish government and the European Social Fund – has been cut by 23 % this year, he said. Mooney told Trinity News that students in receipt of funds often receive a second payment in Hilary term but these may stop if funds remain low. “Actually being able to afford to go to college and then scrape together enough money to actually function dayto-day is a major struggle for so many students,” he said. He also revealed that the SU has lent out around ¤10,000 of its own funds to students in need.
Similar to the hardship fund, loans are a maximum of ¤100 per student. Regarding the student grant, Mooney said that the SU “has no plans at the moment” to campaign for an increase, but that “it is something that has been discussed.” Currently, the SU has “no official stance on the issue of college fees and the grant,” he said. However from a “completely personal and not SU point of view”, Mooney said he has seen “many students struggle this year, even with the SUSI grant.” With the cost of living, especially in Dublin, continuing to rise, he said that a diminishing or even stable grant “isn’t enough”. Mooney also said that College
is “still hoping” to impose student charges. “While we have to recognise that the college themselves have funding cuts and need to increase funding themselves, we have to make it clear that students are not here as a source of revenue,” he argued. While communication lines with College have been opened regarding new charges, he said that discussions have yet to get into the “gritty details”. College was unable to provide comment on these issues before going to print.
Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne, campaigned in last year’s presidential race on a platform of experience and big ideas for reshaping the union. Despite conceding during the election campaign that he would not be a “megaphone president”, he has taken a leading role on all of the SU’s campaigns so far. His visibility as part of the USI’s budget rally saw him grace the front page of this newspaper bearing the megaphone he said he wasn’t expecting to carry. Campaigning has emerged as his forte, with McGlacken-Byrne spearheading the recent voter registration drive along with LGBT rights officer, Damien McClean, which registered over 3,000 students ahead of the impending marriage equality referendum, an issue which the SU is mandated to campaign for. Initiatives such as the Q&A with Provost Patrick Prendergast have also enabled him to maintain a high profile in within the college at large. His plan for a more flexible set of assessments has seen fewer direct results, though several integral processes have been begun. He told Trinity News that he has been in conversation with the dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and staff in the Global Relations Office to extend opportunities such as the MOVE elective to other students, but admitted that this was “something [he] would return to with a bit more welly after Christmas”. He also noted that Trinity’s Strategic Plan commits to renewal of college curricula and stated that he is ensuring student involvement in this process. A centralised feedback system was a manifesto promise that is yet to be put in place. McGlacken-Byrne told Trinity News that the impending redesign of the Trinity login page visible when students access College computers provided opportunities for this, but that the current plan is to introduce a very high level complaints system rather than something more low key which he had envisaged. He did, however, say that he would devise a new plan for this after Christmas, believing that this redesign still provided opportunities for this, as well as a centralised College events calendar which he had proposed. McGlacken-Byrne conceded that his manifesto promise of
more plug sockets for the Berkeley and Lecky libraries has proved more difficult than he originally anticipated. It appears that the Lecky Library is wired in such a way that no more sockets are possible, he said. However, he highlighted that with extensive Higher Education Authority (HEA) funding earmarked for student services, there is room for an application of some of this funding to a project such as a rewiring, which, according to McGlacken-Byrne, means that his “plug socket revolution is still pending.” Regarding his manifesto plan to introduce a book-swapping mechanism to succeed the nonfunctioning online system put in place following the closure of the SU Bookshop, McGlacken-Byrne conceded that it was not possible in the short window at the beginning of term for when students require their new books. He did insist, however, that he was working on an online solution for the beginning of next term, when students will start new modules, in conjunction with Samuel Riggs, SU communications officer, and staff at Click, the laptop repair service based in Mandela House. Arguably the cornerstone of his manifesto was his desire to establish a four-year SU plan to enable some level of continuity between generations of sabbatical officers. So integral was it that McGlacken-Byrne told to Trinity News that he would be “lynched” if he didn’t follow through. He reiterated that he is insistent on continuity, citing the mandates established in October and November requiring officers to submit to council their plans for their year in office, as well as to meet fortnightly with their successors. He also mentioned that he is already working on a crossover manual for his successor. He told Trinity News that he was following the example of SUs in Britain to establish this, and is working with former education officer Hugh Sullivan, now a consultant, and former president John Mannion, now working in organisation development. He insisted that this would be his “single greatest priority for next term”.
Fionn McGorry
Education: Katie Byrne Katie Byrne’s manifesto focused primarily on the need for reform of the exam system and appeals process, changes to class rep training and expansion of careers services available to students across all disciplines. She had pledged to make class rep training as “efficient and effective” as possible and committed herself to seeking “significant savings in transport costs.” Central to her plans for helping students ease into their post-Trinity lives was the organisation of careers talks from industry experts for each of the college’s faculties, with her manifesto promising to organise “faculty specific seminars to give students an extra opportunity to gain insights into careers and their potential career paths.” In addition, Byrne set out plans to expand the Gradlink programme through which Trinity alumni help organise work experience and interviews for undergraduates of certain departments. Her manifesto also committed her to seek reform of the exam timetabling and appeals process, noting that bad timetabling can have “a dramatic effect on those who have to deal with it” and particularly plagued student in certain departments. Byrne pledged to “ensure that exams are timetabled with a minimum of 24 hours between the start time of each exam and that students should sit a maximum of four exams in a five-day week.” She also hit out at the two-day window that Trinity gives students wishing to appeal their result, describing it as “not practical for students or their tutors”, before undertaking to try and
get the two day period increased to five “by bringing forward the publication of corresponding exams results by five days.” Speaking to Trinity News, Byrne highlighted the securing of sponsorship for next year’s class rep training and the use of more interactive workshops for delegates as improvements on previous years. Regarding the financial cost of the event, she said that “reducing the cost of rep training will have to wait another year” but maintained that “value for money isn’t just about cutting costs but making sure we get the most we can out of the money we’re spending”. When it comes to the careers services available to students, she noted that the Gradlink programme had been successfully rolled out to the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy, but that “unfortunately there are financial constraints that will limit progress. Further expansion is scheduled in the coming years.” She also conceded that, while there were no faculty-specific talks this term, she hopes to make progress in this area after Christmas. With regards to the appeals process, she pointed to an upcoming review next semester and noted that the appeals process was “crucially linked” with the issue of exam timetabling. She added that “serious consideration is being given again to the question of Christmas exams which will potentially influence that conversation.”
James Wilson
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
News
4
SU REVIEW
News In Brief
Large drop in number of gold medals awarded Andrew O'Donovan Staff Writer
Only 49 students in the graduating class of 2014 were awarded a gold medal, a decline of 39% on the average of the previous five years, College documents show. Gold medals are awarded to graduates who show “exceptional merit” in their degree exams. The criteria for the award vary between courses, with the arts and humanities requiring an average of 73% (with all papers above 70%) and maths and engineering requiring an average of 80%. From 2004 to 2008, the number awarded had ranged between 46 and 65, but following a jump to 85 in 2008/9 – which prompted Aileen Douglas, the then senior lecturer, to note in a board meeting that “issues of marking
Of the 20 arts and humanities students receiving a medal for the 2013/4 academic year, eight had studied English and four studied law. Despite being among the courses with the highest minimum points, and having 15 foundation scholars among their ranks, dentistry and medicine only had one recipient each. 15 of 95 graduating scholars were awarded a gold medal. When asked to comment on the drop, Senior Lecturer Gillian Martin declined to comment until she had investigated.
Staff Writer “The layers of intense emotions you suffer [during depression] flatlined you much that if you had told me my dad had died I’d have felt nothing,” Niall ‘Bressie’ Breslin, the former Voice of Ireland judge, told students at a panel event organised by the College Historical Society (Hist) and TCDSU to celebrate Mental Health Day on Thursday. From the age of 14, he continually suffered from daily anxiety attacks, insomnia and depression, Breslin said. He was told his self-hate, self-harming and insomnia was just a side-effect of “puberty”. However, Ireland has improved its approach to mental health in the last ten years, he said. Other panellists at the event included SU welfare office, Ian Mooney; Trinity graduate Owen Murphy, founder of ShoutOut, a volunteer organisation that provides free workshops in LGBT to Irish secondary schools; first-
Staff Writer 33% of Trinity’s most recent cohort of first years from Irish schools were educated at a feepaying school, according to feeder school tables recently published in national Irish newspapers. Five such schools – Wesley, St Andrew's, Rathdown, Belvedere and Gonzaga – together account for 10%, and 13 sent more than a quarter of their year to Trinity. The tables rank Irish schools by the number of students they send to high-points courses (defined as the courses of the seven universities, DIT, RCSI, and the teacher education colleges). Topping the list is the Teresian School, Dublin 4, which had all of its graduating class accepted in “high points” courses, followed by Sandford Park, Dublin 6, and Glenstal Abbey, a boarding school in County Limerick. Of the top 20, only three are nonfee paying or Irish-language medium schools. In almost all cases, annual fees for private schools are greater than the student registration charge at third level, and a single year as a day student at St Columba’s College is more expensive than four years worth of registration charges. Despite the continued dominance of private schools, “secondary schools in a number of disadvantaged areas are having increasing success in helping students graduate to higher education”, according to the Irish Times. That success is attributed to “stronger links between post-primary and third-level institutions, more sharply-focused guidance counselling, and higher student expectations through performance targets.” Trinity offers a number of services for socioeconomically disadvantaged students through the Trinity Access Programme (TAP). 6% of places are reserved
Capitated bodies to collaborate on resisting potential further cuts News Editor
year student Izzy Sweeney; and Peter Gowan, debates convenor for the Hist. Ian Mooney opened the event by discussing his personal struggle with depression. He said the illness drained his emotions, affecting his studies and general life. Peter Gowan described it as an overwhelming sense of guilt and self-disgust at the thought of troubling those around him with his “issues”. Owen Murphy talked about his work with ShoutOut. “Until recently the school system actively ‘hated on’ LGBT ideas,” he said. “I’ll go into a room of rowdy boys asking extremely intimate details about my sex life, but then suddenly ask a sincere question: ‘Did your mam cry when you came out?’” The panel concluded by collectively commending the value of staying vigilant, looking for signs of mental ill health, inquiring about injuries on friends’ arms or vomiting on nights out ostensibly caused by excessive consumption of alcohol.
Privately educated account for a third of Trinity’s most recent incoming class Andrew O'Donovan
Welfare: Ian Mooney
James Wilson
Panel calls for greater mental health awareness Robyn Page-Cowman
Continued from p. 3.
and awarding of degrees are being considered by the University Council” – the number had never been below 75, with 78 students being awarded the medal in 2012/3, 80 in 2011/2, 82 in 2010/1, and 75 in 2009/10.
for those who qualify, and they are eligible for a concession on points.
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Trinity’s capitated bodies - Trinity College Students’ Union (TCDSU), the Central Societies Committee (CSC), Trinity Publications, Dublin University Central Athletic Club (DUCAC) and the Graduate Student Union (GSU) - are to meet this evening to discuss resisting further potential cuts to student services. “The focus now is on organising ourselves ahead of the next discussion,” SU president, Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne, told Trinity News. The move follows news that every capitated body will face 5% funding cuts this year. The reduction - which was confirmed at a budget meeting of the capitation committee, chaired by the senior dean, Prof Brian McGing, on November 25th. - follows a budgetary cut of 3.75% - down from a previously proposed cut of 5% - for the 2013/4 academics year. The overall funding allocation for the five umbrella stu-
dent bodies is now ¤1,044,910 for the 2014/15 academic year, ¤100,199 lower than the 2012/13 budget of ¤1,145,109.. This year’s funding has been reduced from ¤340,524 to ¤322,834 for DUCAC; ¤344,874 to ¤326,958 for CSC; ¤312,410 to ¤296,181 for the SU; ¤57,707 to ¤54,709 for the GSU; and ¤46,652 to ¤44,228 for Trinity Publications. In a press statement issued on Sunday, Trinity Publications admitted it was “obviously disappointed” with the cut, but insisted that it is “still committed to providing the same standard, quality and reach of both print and digital media to the student body." The money provided to the capitated bodies comes from the annual student contribution charge, which is paid by all students. Before 2002, students paid a direct “capitation fee” which went straight to the capitated bodies for the provision of services and extra-curricular activities for students. This was included as part the overall registration fee in 2002.
Oireachtas committee told Trinity ‘embracing online education’ Clare Droney Online News Editor Trinity College is “embracing online education at a strategic level both through formal accredited courses of study and through the creation of Massive Open Online Courses,” College’s associate dean for online education, Professor Tim Savage, told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection on Wednesday. Representatives from Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University and the Open University appeared before the Committee on Education and Social Protection to discuss the contribution and development of online courses in third level education in Ireland. The chair of the committee, Labour TD Joanna Tuffy, noted the contributions of the Open University, DCU and Trinity College to online learning in Ireland and stated, “Committee Members look forward to considering what policy steps might further support these exciting developments in the delivery of third level education.” The meeting focused on the potential developments for online learning in Ireland, in particular Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). MOOCs are generally accessible to anyone with internet access and allow unlimited participation. Tuffy commented on the emergence of Massive Open Online Cours-
es (MOOC), “Distance learning is not a particularly new concept, but the advances of digital technology have led to the emergence of interactive Massive Open Online Courses in recent years. These courses, often comprising videos, readings and interactive user forums, offer enriching educational experiences to anyone in the world with an internet connection.” Trinity launched its first Massive Open Online Course, Irish Lives in War and Revolution: Exploring Ireland’s History 19121923, in September 2014 in partnership with FutureLearn. Professor Savage stated that more than 18,000 students signed up to the six-week course led by Professor Ciaran Brady, Dr Anne Dolan and Dr Ciarán Wallace from Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities. The free six-week history course will run again in March 2015. Professor Savage was keen to emphasise that online education is an “opportunity for universities to disseminate their research and excellence in teaching to a wide global audience” and “to raise the identity and profile of an institution” in a global context. He confirmed that three new online postgraduate courses will be launched in 2015 and he restated Trinity College’s commitment to increase the number of online learners to one thousand students within the next five years, as outlined in the Strategic Plan 2014–2019.
We have no doubt there are many more students out there who could benefit from a DU Pirates run tutorial for Trinity education, if deep web browser they were in Seán Healy through obscurity. In this case, properly resourced however, not to prevent prying Staff Writer eyes on private, innocent photos, educational sites on the deep web displaying University Pirate Party links like these tend to do so to environments from Dublin (DU Pirates) ran a tutorial last hide illegal activity. There are much earlier in their Thursday on the The Onion resources accessible to TOR for Router (TOR), a browser used to buying / selling drugs and sharaccess the deep web. The deep ing child pornography. There are development. web is similar to mainstream sites that claim to provide a serinternet, consisting of a huge vice of assassins for hire. The il- TAP Clíona Hannon, director of TAP, told Trinity News that “some of the schools we are working with are facing significant challenges relating to under-resourcing and the impact of outside school factors related to disadvantage and poverty. We have no doubt there are many, many more students out there who could benefit from a Trinity education, if they were in properly resourced educational environments from much earlier in their development.” Trinity College remains a university dominated by Dubliners. For the most recent academic year for which there is data, 2013/14, 55% of domestic students had an address in Dublin and less than a quarter were resident outside of Leinster.
network of servers. The difference is that all the servers accessible uniquely through TOR are heavily encrypted and thus cannot be indexed by public search engines. Sites on the deep web can't be accessed at all by regular browsers like Google Chrome. To find a resource on the deep web isn't made simple. Many site domains names tend to only contain a small legible portion, commonly followed by an assortment of random characters and ending, not in '.com', '.net' etc., but instead with '.onion'. The reason for these additional measures of secrecy, on top of those implemented by TOR, is to ensure the site on the deep web is as inaccessible as possible to those outside the specific deep web community. Similar to Facebook photo links appearing long and meaningless, sites on the deep web utilize security
legal uses of TOR are numerous, and although owning a copy of the software, and using it, is legal in Ireland, stumble onto the wrong page, order a gun without a licence, and you will be breaking the law. Despite this, TOR is praised by many for its pioneering technology in offering users complete anonymity and online freedom. TOR network has benevolent advantages too. A collection of thousands of servers that relay a user's request (i.e. for a web page) around to conceal the original IP of the client's computer, many simply use it to browse the normal web, free of privacy violations. The most unexpected fans, those who are known to enforce surveillance and strongly oppose piracy to the point of censorship:.The US government fund approximately 80% of TOR's running costs.
Ian Mooney was elected in the closest race of last year’s SU elections with 50% of the vote to Dan McFadden’s 48%. His manifesto included many practical measures to promote positive mental, physical and sexual health, equality, and to improve support services for students. One of the points emphasised in his manifesto was the need to reduce queues at the health centre. He told Trinity News that he is meeting next week with the head of the centre, David McGrath, and that reducing queues is high on its “priority list to fix” after the issue was highlighted in a recent external review. Mooney also committed in his manifesto to lobbying college so that students with dietary conditions are catered for. The catering department has been “undergoing change” and “shown itself more than willing” to cater for students with dietary requirements, Mooney told Trinity News. “It is perhaps something to properly follow up on, though,” he added. The proposed weekly welfare blog will begin in January, after the SU website has been updated, he said. There has been one guest speaker so far in the proposed “inspirational speaker series”: the ultra-long distance runner Tony Mangan. The first openly gay Rose of Tralee winner Maria Walsh and the Cork hurler Conor Cusack – who has publicly discussed his experiences of same-sex attraction – are planned for next term. Workshops on suicide prevention, self-esteem and positive mental health will also arrive next term, as part of the new SU mental health campaign. The campaign will focus on “people who might not be directly af-
fected by mental health issues themselves”, encouraging a ‘here to listen’ approach and increasing the “availability of people to go and talk to”. Mooney said he was “very happy” with how the Accommodation Advisory Service dealt with the accommodation crisis. After the digs campaign earlier this year, he said the service now has the “foundation for a longterm database of landlords.” He said that the students affected by the bed bug infestation have been provided with “very good” alternative accommodation and have been given compensation for clothing. A campaign against sexual assault will be one of two longterm SU campaigns next semester along with the mental health campaign. The campaign comes after the “worrying” results of a recent survey shared with all students with 600 respondents so far. Mooney said the data will be released after he has analysed it properly over Christmas, although he will give a general outline of findings at SU Council this week. Other plans include expanding Deal of the Week, further investment in the Bike Reallocation Scheme with possible rental on a termly or yearly basis, and a “more steady system” of free condoms at Ents events. Funding is “probably the biggest obstacle so far this year,” Mooney told Trinity News, with every part of college “feeling the effect and fear of cuts”. The job has at times been challenging, he said: “I knew before starting that it wasn’t as a 9-5pm job, but the reality of it is quite exhausting at times.”
James Prendergast
Ents: Finn Murphy Ents officer Finn Murphy, elected with almost twice as many votes as the next candidate, had a mixture of improvements and new ideas in his election manifesto. Top of the list was that Ents should be running a “weekly affordable night”. Subwave, hosted by Opium Rooms with “good promos and ¤5 entry”, was conceived in response. Murphy says that, although “reasonably well received”, it has been difficult to “make sustainable” due to the large number of class parties availing of a deal for free entry before midnight. After a capital expenditure that he says he had approved, Ents owns high-end sound equipment which is available to rent at half the market price. The rationale as outlined in the manifesto was to provide affordable equipment for students and a revenue stream for the SU. Citing a need to restore “Pav Friday to its former glory" in his manifesto, he claims “a great turnaround this year” with a “friendlier staff culture and great new facilities such as pizza ovens and proper coffee machines,” which he says has led to “a change in student perception of our only bar on campus.” The Ents Crew was reincarnated this year and Murphy describes being “delighted to have four new first year members on the crew and several night managers, photographers, DJs and specific officers for live music and sports.” But there were “a few things I didn't know about the position before I started my campaign and so I made promises I didn't know at the time would be very difficult to keep,” Murphy told Trinity News. A pledge on his manifesto to introduce a discounted access-all-areas Ents card was found to be “not financially or logistically viable”
and his pledge to increase revenue from sponsorship was constrained by the fact that “by the time [he] had started in the role, most major companies’ primary sponsorship budgets are already allocated.” They were able, however, to “slightly increase sponsorship revenues” and he has committed to working alongside the Ents Officer Elect this summer to raise revenue. Murphy feels that he has “succeeded in creating a better buzz about Ents on campus. Numerous collaboration events with other college bodies, clubs and societies,” he said, “have given Ents more relevance for the average student." Speaking about next term’s Trinity Ball, Murphy said that the “date change because of Good Friday has made things a bit trickier for artist bookings” but is confident that they will “put a great Ball together.” He added that “the Dance vibe last year was very much in response to the change in trends of student taste. Dance music is popular right now and electronic artists are much more affordable than live bands. You can expect a shift back to some Indie and Rock music but the dance acts will again be of a high calibre.” A departure from traditional Ents events, a film festival is ambitiously planned for 16-20 March, with the Film Society and Trinity TV also involved. There will be a short-film competition as part of the event, the details of which will be announced in an imminent SU e-mail. Murphy also mysteriously refers to a “super secret” Ents event for next semester which is “top of his agenda” along with planning for RAG week during which he hopes to raise an “ambitious but possible” ¤30,000.
Andrew O'Donovan
Communications: Sam Riggs Sam Riggs was elected last year by a landslide on a platform of “changing the way you interact with the SU”. He pledged that the SU’s website "should have a live feed of information, to make sure you're kept up to date on the latest SU activity" as well as to "create a tab on the SU website which will allow you to access all the past campaigns the SU have run." In addition, a Health Sciences correspondent was promised, monthly sabbatical updates and master classes in journalism for UT novices. Of these promises, Riggs has already fulfilled many; several UT master-classes were held around campus and Trinity Halls such, while three new UT positions – Health Science, Irish Language and LGBT correspondents – have also been established. Contact with College representatives is more consistent with sabbatical officers meeting monthly with the provost and weekly with the dean of students. However, Riggs admits that updates in the weekly SU email “haven’t been going so well” but will continue each month after
Council’s impact report on December 9th. Similarly, the SU website has been rebranded, but his promised ‘Campaigns and Policies’ tab, as well as more frequent updates, will be completed in the new year. Hilary term will also see new SU projects led by Riggs such as multimedia SU publications – including weekly SU video emails, changes to the UT style guide – to provide “maximum satisfaction”, and plans to help SU enterprises, such as House 6 and the SU cafe, gain more visibility. However, according to a UT poll, a sizeable 43% of students said they had no interactions with campaigns on social media. Despite prioritising this in his manifesto and describing himself as a “social-media buff”, this hasn’t improved. The SU Twitter and Facebook accounts are updated more regularly, but when the SU asked its Twitter followers to send in questions for the Q&A event with the Provost it only received five replies, for instance.
Robyn Page-Cowman
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
Maurice Casey delves into the controversial past of the Union of Students in Ireland
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Finding time to find the right tools During their final year, English students have the opportunity to develop their writing under the tutelage of award-winning novelist Deirdre Madden. One student talks to Trinity News about taking his writing to new places. Conor O'Donovan Features Editor It takes Callum and I quite some time to find a suitable spot for our interview. We make our way across the third floor of the Arts Building, finding most of the choicer nooks and crannies are already occupied. We finally settle at a table facing onto the Nassau Street railings. We are here to discuss the creative writing module currently available to Senior Sophister English students. The module is co-ordinated by celebrated author and former Trinity student Deirdre Madden. Once we have made ourselves comfortable, Callum offers a response to an exploratory opening question: "It is more about description of place rather than plot, I guess..." Does our interpretation of place affect the way that we write? Callum thinks it may well have some influence. Will our location on the third floor have any effect on the outcome of this interview? Almost definitely: the recent disappearance of the fuzzy cubes from the upper floors is particularly hard to ignore.
Responsibilities
Photo: Tadgh Healy
"I'm Israeli and I take responsibility" Trinity professor Ronit Lentin talks to Trinity News about her support for the Trinity Apartheid-Free Campus Campaign. Tadgh Healy Staff Writer Ronit Lentin is perhaps the most senior figure associated with Trinity College to support an academic boycott of Israel. Born in Haifa before, as she is keen to stress, the creation of the state of Israel, Lentin began her PhD in Trinity in 1991. She has only just left the staff after retiring as Associate Professor of Sociology in September. As a political sociologist, she has published widely on topics including Ireland’s relationship with gender, race and immigration. It’s clear that Lentin’s personal life bears a close relation to her academic work; hailing from a Jewish Romanian family, Lentin has also written on the Holocaust, seeking to tackle the challenge of historical interpretation through the lens of the neglected female perspective. In the latter stage of her career, her work focused on the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Once again, the line between the academic and the personal is difficult to discern. Lentin has increasingly involved herself in political activism and has signed both the ‘TCD Apartheid-Free Campus Campaign’ petition calling for an end to research affiliations with institutions linked to the Israeli security services, and the Academics for Palestine (AfP) pledge for a complete academic boycott of Israel. We have arranged to meet early in the day because she is attending a protest at lunchtime organised by MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland) who are looking to bring an end to the direct provision hostels and deportations. Arriving on time down to the minute, she greets me light heartedly, bemoaning the dilemmas Dublin winter weather brings: Lentin is wearing a crimson beanie against the cold but she jokes this will mess up her hair. As the subject matter becomes more serious, her tone becomes more frank, but still she remains in good humour. Her sentences are cogent, her answers direct. Lentin has a brother who still lives in Israel, so I begin by asking if she has been back recently. “No, not recently. I’m reluctant to go,” she says. “As soon as I get off the plane, I become an animal. You get in a cab and everyone starts shouting, you know? It’s a very angry society. Since my husband
died, I haven’t been back… I don’t know why, but I will go.” Her husband, Louis Lentin, a Trinity graduate who died in July this year, was an acclaimed film, theatre and television director, and member of Aosdána. In 1986, he produced The Island, a play about inmates at Robben Island prison based around Sophocles’ Antigone, at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. It was from speaking to John Kani, a black South-African who acted and co-wrote the play, says Ronit, that she takes inspiration for her present activism. So not acting is morally indefensible? “Yes, and I remember this line from John at the time. He was very definite you had to take a stand. Louis, by doing the play, took a stand.”
Trinity campaign
Similarly, the Trinity ‘ApartheidFree’ campaign is notable for drawing on, and celebrating, Trinity’s centrality in the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, with Mary Robinson and Kader Asmal named as inspirations. “This is why I think Ciarán [O’Rourke’s] campaign is really excellent,” she says. “Trinity fought apartheid in the past - you know Desmond Tutu has called what is happening in the occupied territories worse that anything he saw in South Africa? I think this gives us added responsibility to protest Israel’s actions now.” Despite this, the campaign so far has not, on the whole, garnered signatures or even discernable interest from the wider staff community in college. This is essential if the campaign wishes to affect college policy at board level. Lentin notes at the recent debate on whether or not to stage an academic boycott of Israel, held on campus in November, that “very few academics were there, other than the usual people like David Landy.” Even the AfP pledge, as of September 1st, had only 12 signatories from Trinity. If the "Apartheid-Free" campaign is so strong, why has there been such little interest from staff? Lentin believes the answer is largely financial: “This is the way Trinity is going. I have one friend who opposes what Israel is doing, but his research funding comes from an Israeli university, so he can’t say anything.” Will some academics have to damage their own careers for the campaign to ultimately be successful? Lentin nods carefully. “Yes, I think so. But I also think part of the problem is that this is-
sue is no longer the cause du jour. Maybe around 2007 it was, but not now.” I ask why it still remains the cause du jour for her. “The reason I am involved is because I care. Not just about Israel but about Palestine. I’m Israeli, and I take responsibility for what they’re doing there. Another reason is because my family experienced some of the Holocaust in Romania. I just don’t understand how you can do to others what has been done to you, and such a short time ago… so that’s me.” Lentin manages a brief smile.
Academics for Palestine
The AfP pledge states that their boycott of Israeli academic institutions will remain “until such time as Israel complies with International Law and universal principles of human rights.” Likewise, the Trinity boycott would remain as long as “Israel’s programme of occupation and discrimination against the Palestinian people persists.” But what, in practical terms, would be the conditions necessary for a boycott to be lifted, if Trinity were to implement one? “As a minimum, firstly, the complete exit from the occupied territories, and secondly, to immediately stop the siege of Gaza.” What about judicial action from the UN or the ICC? “Absolutely yes. I believe Israel is guilty of war crimes.” Lentin goes on to describe that the motivations for Israel’s regular offensives in the occupied territories are not only ideological or strategic, but a market requirement of the Israeli arms industry. “People buy these weapons not because they are the best, but because every two years when they have their next attack in Gaza, they can say, ‘Hey look, this works.’ It’s product testing, and it’s completely unacceptable the Palestinian people are used as guinea-pigs.” She then references a film called The Lab by Yotam Feldman, which provides “extraordinary” evidence to support her claim. I suggest to Lentin that even if Trinity academics do stage a boycott, it will be easy for these institutions funded by arms companies to find other research partners in universities around the world. I suggest that the real fight is political, not academic: against governments, not Irish universities. “Yes I do agree with you to an extent. We must put pressure on governments - and you know the Irish government is actually quite
pro-Palestine? - but this does not mean academics are not complicit. You used to be able to argue ignorance, but now with the Internet and Facebook, everyone knows what is going on. And it’s not just the scientists. There are philosophers like Asa Kasher [of Tel Aviv University, and author of the Code of Conduct for the Israeli Defence Forces] who are providing moral justification for what Israel is doing in the occupied territories. These are public intellectuals justifying atrocities.” I want to talk about another individual Lentin is familiar with: Michael Federmann, the billionaire chairman of Elbit Systems and a board member of the Weizmann Institute of Science (both institutions which would be boycotted under the TCD Apartheid-Free Campus Campaign). Incidentally, in June of this year, he was also awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2014 “for services to UK/Israel business cooperation and UK prosperity.” Even Lentin is visibly shocked at this fact: “Wow, that’s incredible don’t you think?” Elbit Systems is one of the largest drone manufacturers for the US, as well as the UK, military. I venture that boycotting such companies may make enemies out the US and UK. Lentin takes time to consider her answer: “No, I don’t think so.” She says it’s become almost accepted that an issue like this one divides nations rather than sets them against each other. “For example, the American Anthropological Association recently voted in favour of a boycott. I don’t see it as making enemies. Hopefully it will have a knock on effect and others will follow.” The second individual I mention is the writer Amos Oz. He is one of few living men and women with an international reputation in literature. His name is often in the running for the Nobel Prize, and in June of this year he travelled to Dublin to accept an honorary doctorate from Trinity. Less than two weeks later, Israel commenced their most recent offensive in Gaza: ‘Operation Protective Edge’. Besides the figures Lentin quotes (“22,000 housing units destroyed”), the conflict received widespread condemnation for the bombing of schools and hospitals, and the high proportion of child mortality. Oz later came out in defence of Operation Protective Edge: “What would you do if your neighbor across the
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Ireland’s own past with colonial oppression - and here we are dealing with the last occupied colonial state on the planet – means that if we boycott, things will happen. street sits down on the balcony, puts his little boy on his lap, and starts shooting machine-gun fire into your nursery?” I ask Lentin if she believes Trinity should strip Oz of his honorary degree. “Yes, they should, but I don’t think they will. Maybe that horrible comment is because he lives close to Gaza and he hears the rockets going in, but that’s exactly why I don’t understand how he can make it.” She continues: “Oz is a character who in recent years swings between…” She stops herself. “It’s like his writing. His more recent books, I don’t like. They’ve become repetitive.” Finally I ask Lentin what impact, what effects, a boycott from Trinity could have. If what she has campaigned for comes true, and Trinity publically severs research links with certain Israeli institutions, what message will be sent, and how loud will it be? She is adamant that Trinity’s, and Ireland’s, reputation should not be underestimated: “Our stand against Apartheid in the past, and the work of people like Kader [Asmal], not only gives us a responsibility to speak, but means that people will listen. Ireland’s own past with colonial oppression - and here we are dealing with the last occupied colonial state on the planet – means that if we boycott, things will happen.”
Callum is still taking the module and is therefore somewhat reticent when defining its exact workings. One thing he does make clear at the outset, however, is that the module is hard work. "Many people see it as a nice module, which it is. But it isn't an easy one. Its a proper module." The class meet once a week for two hours but it is the preparation for these meetings that is significant. The class send in a piece of writing each week, two of which are selected to be read aloud in class and then critiqued by the group, alongside other pieces of published fiction. The temptation to cut corners with reading and assignments is, of course, to be avoided in all classes, but particularly when it comes to one's own work: Callum feels that people will only get back what they put in. "If you present unedited work the criticism will often centre around details you could have corrected yourself," he says. The class is explicitly designed for students who are already producing their own work. The way in which students are encouraged to engage with texts is very different to anything they may have encountered elsewhere in their studies. "It's a lot more technical," Callum says. "We're more focused on trying to learn the tools of the trade." According to a description on the English Department's website, the module's focus is " the craft of fiction and the skills required to create work that is engaging and artistically satisfying." The budding creative writers are referred to Andrew Cowan's practical guide, The Art of Writing Fiction, an approach Callum initially found strange.
Importance of method
He now feels he appreciates the importance of method in honing one's ability. The class do practical exercises that provide an invaluable starting point: asking yourself twenty questions to be answered from the perspective of your character is a good way to build their biography, for instance. At the very least the classes practical elements provide something to kick against. Another exercise sees students create and resolve conflict between characters, which may initially seem prescriptive but actually demonstrates how narrative progresses. At any rate Callum feels his writing is being improved significantly and brought to a level where he could pursue it seriously in the future. While he still identifies his own writing as more of a hobby, there is an expectation that some of the class will go on to write full time, though he believes post-graduate study in the area would be the next step. According to Callum, the most beneficial aspect of the course is how the module helps those embarking on larger projects to carve out the time necessary to engage with their work and set goals for themselves. The acquaintances he has outside of college who are working creatively must balance their writing with what they are doing to support themselves. The module offers an opportunity to incorporate writing into one's academic schedule. Having a class each week where one is expected to submit original
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Having a class each week where he is expected to submit original work forces Callum to write regularly. work forces him to write regularly. Callum also points to some more abstract aspects of the module. He muses on whether tastes convert into a certain style, in relation to a particular member of the class who does not identify with many of the selections from the Granta Book of Short Fiction. The variety of styles is definitely valuable. "You pretty much never get to see other peoples' creative writing," he says. "There are a lot of American students in the class and it is interesting to see the different ways that they represent place." Several references to what Callum defines as a "sense of place", something he feels is linked to the particular genre the module focuses on: thus far this term the class has analysed the work of Colm Toibín and Donal Ryan, among others. With regards his own work, he is finding himself drawn to post-recessionary narratives set in the West of Ireland. He can't quite decide whether this is down to the influence of the course. Alternately, it could be the same impulses that have led him to take "pretty much every Irish writing module available" in what has been a formative period in his intellectual development.
Emerging voice
Though he has experimented with other forms of fiction in the past, Callum believes that the leaning towards one particular style or genre in such a course is inevitable and that there is still room for the different narrative voices within his class. The question of whether these voices were really there to begin with or if they have emerged over the course of the module remains, however, as Callum only gets to read two of his peers' pieces a week. Madden herself had her first short stories published in the Irish Press when she was still on Trinity and is now a member of Aosdána. The English Department's website also tells us that the M. Phil programme in Creative Writing on offer in the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing (in Trinity) is for "practicing, or prospective authors who wish to develop their writing... in the context of an Irish writing milieu." When asked if they felt this also applied to the undergraduate module Callum unsure. Much of the material on the reading list for the module is the work of Trinity graduates, such as Donal Ryan, and Callum can remember one instance where the class were referred to a book by one of Madden's former students. However, the material read in class is never an exhaustive list of Trinity graduates, he points out. For example Beckett was seldom mentioned, and even then, more as an example of what not to do. Callum was quick to recommend the module to others interested in developing their creative writing. As for his musings about the origin of his style, one of the module's Learning Outcomes points inwards: on successful completion of the module, students will be able to " translate lived experience into fiction." I wonder, as I turn off the dictaphone, whether Callum's next piece will stumble upon the source of its style and identity, or the ongoing search for this source. As we head off toward the places on campus we identify with, this last question of mine also remains unanswered, but only for the time being.
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
7
John McLean in Trinity last week. Photo: Pavel Rozman
Challenging misconceptions about homelessness Recent government policy has failed to adequately address the issue of homelessness. We talk to a diverse group of homeless people about their experiences and the options available to them. Bláithín Sheil Staff Writer Some of you may be aware of the man with a cat who can be seen near the Berkeley library. His name is John Mc Lean. The cat is called Trinny because he is Trinity College's mascot, but John says “he is really mine”, as it is he who minds and feeds him. John took Trinny into his care on the request of a friend after the cat was abused. When taking his photograph, we called Trinny so he would look at the camera and smile for us. “Trinny, you have to smile,” he says. John takes great pride in Trinny, telling us as much about the cat's life as about his own. Before coming down from Belfast, he worked in the Royal Belfast Institution as a maths and sports teacher. He then worked and lived in Wynn's Hotel, Abbey Street, for years. He put on shows and got the audience involved, but when the clientele changed, he couldn't stay. He now stays in a hostel at night which he considers his home, where he has his own room, but he can always be found on the campus of Trinity College during the day. There are always fights and arguments in the hostel, he says. It has a no pet policy, but Trinny waits for him every morning at the library steps, even in the rain. He seems content where he is. “I quite like it,” he says, although he would rather a "nice hotel" if he had his way. Trinity is very much John's spot in Dublin. He “wouldn't fancy it” if another homeless person joined him. He considers himself a bit above the rest, those who are using. However, he knows many of the students and staff of Trinity well, some even visit him with their pets. Trinity has become a safe haven for John, where he is liked and respected for his friendly and chatty nature.
Crisis worsening
Dublin’s homelessness crisis is escalating, with figures steadily increasing over the years. As of November 2014, there were 168 people sleeping rough in Dublin, a 20% increase from last year, while over 1,500 sleep in emergency hostels. Six new people enter homelessness every day, and Focus Ireland now supports 45 new families per month. A lot
of these people have never been homeless before and had never imagined that they would ever become homeless. It can affect anyone: educated, addiction free and working people, anyone living in private rented accommodation. In May 2014, the government announced plans to eradicate homelessness by 2016, approving plans to refurbish 2,700 housing units from local authority stock and NAMA properties. But these efforts are limited and have been accompanied by a sudden increase in property values, meaning that financially stable families, some of whom have already been devastated by the initial economic crash, are priced out of the property market and forced onto the streets. The Department of Social Welfare rent allowance is also fixed, failing to reflect the rising cost of living.
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John takes great pride in Trinny, telling us as much about the cat's life as about his own. Before coming down from Belfast, he worked in the Royal Belfast Institution as a maths and sports teacher. Misconceptions
We hold many misconceptions about those without a place to stay at night, but these people are members of our society just the same as we are. The people
on the streets are only a small representation of the population, but we are not aware of the diversity of the group, Father Peter McVerry, the founder of the Peter McVerry Trust, a homelessness charity, points out to me. We cannot categorise them. There are families and skilled tradespeople, as well as one particular man who recently embarked on a PhD in Computer Science, who are without a home. One thing that is clear is that nobody chooses to be homeless. It is a situation that can happen to anyone, for any number of reasons. Some people are homeless due to drug use; others take drugs to deal with it. Some came to Ireland in search of a better life; others had always been self supporting, but are faced with financial difficulties. Emergency hostels provide beds for one night and other medium-term hostels house people for longer. Some have a drug free policy, but others are not as strict. If all hostels threw out drug users, they would have nowhere to go. This of course means that many do not avail of the hostel services due to bad experiences. Fights, violence and non-compatibility of residents are some of many problems in dormitories. It is not uncommon to wake in the morning to find that personal belongings have been stolen. One man recently told me how that he spent the night in the pouring rain on Grafton Street, freezing and soaked through by the morning. At 6am, a passer-by stopped, called work saying he would be delayed, and brought the man back to his apartment, where he dried his clothes, allowed him use his facilities, and gave him warm food and drink. This was the most compassion he had experienced in the months since becoming homeless. One of the emotional issues faced by the homeless is dignity. Peter McVerry emphasises the need for everyone to have their own personal space, to be able to lock the door at night, know that you are at peace, and to rise in the morning knowing that you and your belongings are safe. It suggests a lot about how we value the members of our society, if we give them old rooms with peeling paint or place them in dangerous dormitories. It sends a message that they have no value and
worth, further lowering their self esteem. A man once asked Peter why a person such as himself would bother “with the likes of us”. Dormitories are a disaster, which is why all of the hostels in his trust are comprised of single rooms, some with en suites.
Available services
In Haven House, a temporary accommodation site in Dublin 7, the aim is to empower the 59 residents. They are encouraged to attend support groups and go back to education, but always at their own pace. There is a variety of support groups including addiction support, self-esteem, settlement, mindfulness and managing difficult conversations, which help to set the residents up for independant living.They have a case-management approach where, upon arrival, the client is assessed and a care plan drawn up. Different staff members are assigned to deal with the many different issues that can be ongoing at any one time. The staff are present 24/7 and the House is based on good solid relationships between everyone. The resident works along with their key worker and support team to deal with whatever particular difficulty they want to deal with at that time, while being encouraged to face their most pressing issues, which they eventually do due to the approach taken by Crosscare. Donna McGee, Deputy Project Leader, says that the aim is to instil a sense of self worth and value, achieved by relatively small acts: equality of staff and residents, building strong and trusting relationships, offering residents a cup of tea when offering a visitor one, and helping residents reach their full potential. These small acts are a big deal to someone who has never had the luxury of such care, and are pivotal to their empowerment. For one resident, Mary, it is the first home she has had in years. She had a difficult relationship with her father, and on the death of her mother she was put out of the house, spending years between night-only services. She hadn't previously used drugs or alcohol, but on becoming homeless she has fallen into using snow blow, crack and crystal meth as a source of support. She eventually came to Haven House, which she now considers her home. She
has excellent relationships with the staff. She emphasised the importance of her key worker with whom, among other things, she goes Christmas shopping, and who she meets for coffee, something she would never have done before. In doing simple things like this, she is shown a different and better way of life, which serves as motivation for her to continue towards her goal of independent living. Her key-worker helps her consider various treatment options and has been a crucial support to her since she came to Haven House, she helps her to socialise and teaches her life skills. She speaks very highly of Haven House, telling me how she loves walking back up the hill to the doors, having a place to call home, and having a safe place to live. Crosscare have a similar approach to Peter McVerry. Their belief is that every person is created in the image and likeness of God, and their core values are love, respect and excellence. Their residence in Smithfield is of a very high standard, beautifully designed and immaculately clean. There was a sense of community, camaraderie and respect among the residents and staff. The accommodation is a mixture of high quality houses and apartments each with numerous single or twin rooms, some of which are ensuite, a tastefully decorated shared kitchen and a living area. Patrick tells me about his time in a dormitory he shared with 20 others before arriving at Crosscare. He had never been homeless before. He lost his home due to rising rents. In the hostel, he had no personal space. Every morning, he was kicked out and left to wander the streets aimlessly all day, turning to alcohol in order to cope. This had severe negative implications on his mental health, leading to a nervous breakdown, resulting in time being spent in hospital. For Patrick, Crosscare is a “rock to me”. He is dealing with his alcohol problem and serious mental health issues, has made friends and built a community around him, and now attends college within the Phibsboro National Learning Network. The residents, once settled, are quick to get involved in the programmes and volunteering. Victoria came with her son from Lithuania in 2001 after a diffi-
cult break up with her husband. They lived for seven years in a council flat in a dangerous area, and when her request to move to a safer area was denied, she left and came to Crosscare. With the help of Crosscare, she has dealt the alcohol problem linked to the break up, and can now enjoy a social drink with friends. She joined the Community College, which is a central part of the work done by Crosscare, and takes classes in crocheting. The College is run on a system of peer-learning, and nobody knows the status of anybody else, thus enhancing the objective of achieving equality among everyone. Clients can learn to read or write, giving them basic skills to help find employment. What is impressive about Victoria is the active and keen contribution she makes to Haven House. She volunteers at the Crosscare Cafe and has been so successful that she has joined the CE scheme, a three-year course where she is paid a small sum to work in the cafe while being trained as a catering assistant. This course will enable Victoria to live independently in the future. Over the summer, she grew a variety of vegetables on site which were then used in the kitchen. She strives for independence, not relying on the catering available at the hostel, preferring to buy and cook her own food. She has a lively social life, and is thriving in the safe and supportive environment of Crosscare. She feels extremely lucky to be where she is. Sarah was placed in a B & B after she became homeless due to drug usage, spending two years there. On arrival the room was dirty and unfit for human habitation. It was also an empty shell: there was no television, kettle, or fridge, nothing to make it homely. Having been thrown out, she spent the last year on the streets, which she says was a truly terrifyig experience. She later spent time in other services elsewhere, and ended up using Snowblow, which is highly addictive and causes extreme paranoia. It is unclear what is actually in the drug, making it even more dangerous and difficult to treat. She was beaten up and robbed of her suitcase of clothes and pictures of her two children, who are in the custody of her mother. Sarah now lives in Haven House and is tackling her addictions with the sup-
port of her key-worker.
Socialisation
Social interaction is one of the key reasons that Teach Mhuire do soup runs around the city every night, to show that people care. Patrick said that it is so important to acknowledge homeless people, to help ease the loneliness of sitting on a street all day, being ignored by thousands. It doesn't cost us a thought to spend a few minutes speaking to someone. Everyone can make a small contribution to this cause, either by volunteering, fundraising or by simply speaking to people. When we see someone begging, our immediate reaction is often to look away, or to ignore the person. Other people say we shouldn't give money; that it is better to give a sandwich or a drink. But, interestingly, McVerry said that giving someone food is the worst thing you can do, because in doing that you are deciding what they need, and making a judgment about what they are going to spend the money on. It is an insult to someone's dignity to make a decision for them, when they can make that decision themselves. Even worse is throwing a few coins into a cup and shuffling on before they can even look at you or thank you. It is far more beneficial to stop and say hello, to actually interact with the person and ask what they need. In doing this, you are giving the person a choice, and more often than not, the most important aspect of the interaction is the fact that the social interaction happened at all. At the end of my visit to Haven House, Sarah proudly gives me a tour of the residence. There is a television room where they all socialise together, a pool table, and a large paved garden area with benches and flowers. Upstairs, there is a high standard exercise room which is open all day. Across the hall, there is the relaxation room where mindfulness classes are held. Perhaps the most poignant feature of all was a collage on the wall of photos of people who moved on from Haven House into their own home. It serves as a reminder of attainable success for current residents, and a source of hope. The names of the Crosscare residents have been changed to protect their confidentiality.
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
8
Trinity film makers bring their ambition into focus The DFM module brings students from three departments together to collaborate on original film-making projects. Film student Eavan Gaffney talks to Trinity News about how her own project has taken shape. Caoimhe Gordon Staff Writer Right at this moment, if you decided to take a walk around the college campus in the December chill, you will inevitably see students chatting, students snapchatting, tourists waiting for the Book of Kells, more tourists searching for the Book of Kells, students heading to lectures, students being persuaded not to head to lectures. Then, in a corner of the campus, you may happen upon something a little out of ordinary. There, before your very eyes, would be a group of fourth year students with a camera, a script and bucket loads of enthusiasm. It is almost their final day of shooting their short film and the delight is palpable. The common campus explorer would wonder what in the world these students were up to. This curious one decided to find out. I meet Eavan Gaffney, a fourth year student, in the Buttery. She slides a green tray onto the table before she sits down opposite me. Her group has been filming all morning, she explains, so she hasn’t had a chance to eat lunch yet. As a TSM student of English Literature and Film Studies, Eavan had to choose one subject to major in. She chose Film Studies and is currently enrolled in the DFM module, one of the main reasons why she chose to major in this subject. This is why she has been on campus filming during hours when some other students are tucked up in bed, dreading the irritating din of their alarm. This is why she is acutely aware of the hour the sun will rise over the campus. It is also why she is talking to me today. DFM is a module that facilitates the collaboration of three different college departments as it can be taken by the students of drama, film studies and music during their fourth year. The students of the class divide into two groups and each group must make two films each of a length of ten minutes. Each and every decision is made by the students- from the vague ideas pitched at the beginning of term to the final product, ready for screening in the New Year.
Roles
Illustration: Mubashir Sultan
Lifting the veil of misunderstanding Iran is changing much faster than a lot of people realise. Even those who grew up elsewhere in the Middle East are surprised by what they find. Rana Rassouli Contributor Amidst all of the shuffling and impatient immigrants in a dull and somewhat claustrophobic room in the Garda National Immigration Bureau, I begin to seek some sort of inspiration for writing this article. I begin to realise the diversity of the individuals in the same room as me, also impatiently waiting for their visa application procedure to end. Individuals who have nothing in common except the goals and deadlines we have to meet by the time we go back home. This is the one place where my nationality does not perplex others. I pursue a friendly conversation with a Somalian woman with two exceptionally well behaved children placed on her lap. “So why did you come to Ireland?” she politely asks. “Oh, the usual, studies and stuff, y’know?” I answer back. Our conversation doesn’t last long. She glances at UAE passport and raises her eyebrows with a sympathetic look on her face and asks me how things are in Iran. “Great!” I reply. This seemingly pointless conversation provides some perspective into the ideas that people have with regard the Middle East. Being an Iranian who was raised in Dubai, the capital of one of the most politically secure parts of the Middle East, I feel able to look beyond my own borders and try and to find out why people have certain perceptions about us. How we perceive our home is completely different. It is a warm and comfortable, family space; a safety net to go back to in case all else fails; an opportunity to build a life on a tax-free income. Most importantly, it is a place with great food. In Dubai, the news and the way we use the media is entirely different in comparison to Ireland, or any western, democratic country. The way in which the available information was delivered to us when we were growing up was based on an idealistic foundation. “Happy news” we used to call it. The knowledge and ways
of thinking that we were not exposed to in the Middle East are issues that my peers and I discovered when we entered third level education.
Censorship
Censorship of the media was a reality of daily life in Dubai. Academic resources, in particular textbooks, were also inconsistent. My friends and I used to jokingly place the blanked-out pages of our textbooks which addressed World War II up to the skylight in the classrooms to see what kind of information we were being diverted from learning about. “It’s simply too vulgar to be taught to children,” we were told. It wasn't that our access to information was limited. The board of education merely suggested that teachers were only officially allowed to address certain topics in a particular manner until we reached high school, which seemed fair due to the modest culture. It remains unclear whether it was beneficial or detrimental. Similarly with the domestic national news, topical issues on foreign relations would only be addressed in brevity, followed by advertisement breaks and then an optimistic, fresh-faced TV presenter with more "news" on the economic expansion and investment in the United Arab Emirates. To be honest, most of us were happy living that way. It worked out that we were more productive when we were subconsciously happy and arguably in the dark about security threats in the region. We were safe and living in a community that had something to offer individuals from all corners of the world. The way in which the news is delivered today is very much in tune with the rest of the world, but the motivation and optimism of Dubai residents remains the same. The hustle-bustle of tourism and business during the day is contrasted with the liberal and vibrant nightlife that many of the expats indulge in. People speculate if the lack of exposure to political issues and significant historical occurrences
invested the youth of Dubai with the drive that has made the city a newborn business hub. Maybe so. The effervescence of our political climate definitely did not correspond to that of the west. There is a major disparity between how we view ourselves in the Middle East and the way the west views us. Much of this hinges on people’s views of Iran, though few seem to know much about the country outside the conventional narrative of a progressive democratic society transformed into a conservative and ‘mysterious’ Islamic republic following the revolution in 1979.
Social change after 1979
In 1979, Iran went through a revolution that brought centuries of monarchy and progressive socio-economic flourishing to a halt and established the Islamic Republic. The influence of the clergy ushered huge social change and initiated a campaign to eradicate western influence upon the culture. What was called the “cultural revolution” ceased to exist within university communities. Many things that were deemed a threat to the culture such as books, art, music and the consumption of alcohol and pork were condemned. The influence of the clergy also led to the mandatory covering of the hair and body for young girls from the age of nine. This became problematic as it was invasive of the domestic and personal space of women. Also banned was the use of make-up, the wearing of bright colours, high heels, and anything that would attract unwanted attention or seen to be influenced by the western world. That being said, what is frequently characterised as a largely political gender imbalance and a source of feminist outrage, extended to men rights too. Men stopped wearing ties and bowties, which were frowned upon as a western concept, in addition to multiple other fashion items. Even haircuts which were deemed to be “too American” were banned. This unified restricting of dress codes for both sexes and was consistently monitored by “komiteh”,
the “revolutionary guards” or, ironically, the “morality police”, who arrested and fined people for supposedly violating the dress codes that were set clearly in stone by the Mullahs or Islamic clergy. What is particularly interesting is the progression of the lifestyle change from then to the present day. The timeline that presents itself is astounding, with most of my family members and friends in Iran accessing social media websites and consistently engaging with movements that are more focused on breaking the stereotypes rather than reinforcing them. The internet has revolutionised the way that the western world communicates and engages in political issues and international relations. In Iran's case, however, it truly has constructed more of a paradigm shift with a generation of carefree young adults. The internet provides a place for comfort, self-expression and an illustration of how the Iranians want the world to see them, which commonly deviates from how they are portrayed by the mainstream media. It is inspiring to see young adults attempt to break free, adapt to new dress restrictions and find new, innovative ways to push the boundaries. Following the settlement of the regime over the decades, it is no secret that domestic police and authority officials have worked towards nullifying the regulations imposed on the people and have sought to adopt a “sure, it’ll be grand” attitude towards dress codes in the public sphere. In the northern regions of Tehran, a settlement of upper-middle class and fashion-loving individuals had begun wrestling with conservative dress by wearing short, figure-hugging coats, high heels, makeup and their own innovative idea of the headscarf. Commitment to creativity and individual expression has rendered a social change throughout the major cities of Iran, making it one of the largest underground markets for importing fashion items from China, the US and central Europe.
Disconnection
Reluctance to visit home for eight years made me feel somewhat disconnected to what is the essence of my being. It made me reach out to family members more frequently. Having originally been an ‘insider’, I explored the country as an ‘outsider’ to put into context what the west thought of us. In Tehran, one lives a schizophrenic double-life. There is the private sphere and the public sphere, both of which consist of entirely different operating mechanisms. The domestic/private side of life does not have boundaries, whereas the public sphere is quite strict with them. You essentially employ two different masks, which can easily make for a hostile social environment, but which has diluted over the years. Prejudice is also quite common amongst the few conservatives in Iran. We have a simple code: be friendly to your neighbor and lie to your elders. Looking back to the conversation I had with the lovely Somalian lady and countless other people, it’s no surprise they had all asked me how things were “back home”. It’s quite tricky to provide a civil response. Their concerns and sentiments are undoubtedly, wholeheartedly sincere and genuine, but they are always patronising. There is a constant flow of leaflets, online invitations to conferences and movements, that all seem relevant to my background, sent on by extremely concerned college peers, in all sincerity. Initially, this was a turn off when presented by western feminists who have little experience, or knowledge, about the lifestyle of an individual that lives within a stereotype. It is a constant reminder of the blanket assumption that we are a strange but wonderful oppressed species who have no power. This cocktail of sympathy and ignorance we find in European college students seems, to us, more oppressive than the regime we supposedly live in.
That being said, the students of DFM are not tossed into the deep end upon arriving back into their final year of college. First, the students were divided into groups for the module. Then in week two came the pitches for ideas, followed by a vote. Some provided scripts in a “this is one I prepared earlier” sort of way. Others, like Eavan, contributed an idea that they were interested in. Then the different roles were divided up among the students according to their various disciplines. For Eavan, because her idea was chosen, the role is director of one of the group’s films. For the music students, their responsibility lies in the composition of the soundtrack, while the drama students dived into the casting of the short films. Others perform roles in production and editing. For the first six weeks of term, the talented students attended two classes a week. Forget seemingly endless PowerPoints and unintelligible scribbles from a long lecture. DFM students are provided with masterclasses from industry experts. Their lecturers this semester included Bollywood director Shyam Benedal to Colm Nowell, the Irish locations manager for such well received productions as Penny Dreadful and Byzantium. After Reading Week, the Oscarworthy adage came to life once more, this time before the students’ eyes as it really was time for lights, camera and action. Shooting took place between weeks eight and ten and most filming took place around Trinity College. Eavan describes how the process of filming around the campus makes her see the college through new eyes now. She recalls her first morning on set when she landed on campus at half six in the morning and the realisation of difficult it is to achieve the correct shot. I met Eavan the very same day. The lighting of the scene they filmed that morning had proved to be a troublesome
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The life of a DFM student may sound amusing, or even kind of fun: chilling around campus with your comrades and a camera, literally waiting for the sun to shine. But for the students, this is a serious endeavour. conundrum as it had shined in a way deemed unsuitable for the shoot to progress. Eavan and her crew had to delay filming until this issue was rectified until they could complete filming later that day. This detail from a normal day in the life of a DFM student may sound amusing, or even kind of fun: chilling around campus with your comrades and a camera, literally waiting for the sun to shine. But for the students, this is a serious endeavour. These students are in fourth year, a year that contributes to their final degree. DFM has the equivalent number of credits of two separate modules, a fact that makes it even more important for the students to create something extraordinary. Each student is graded separately based on their role in the production and the film alone is not all the students are assessed on. They must also provide paperwork from the shooting of the film - a shot list, story boards and a reflection where they explain their inspiration and justify their actions during their term as member of a film crew. Furthermore, in much the same way other students are negotiating deadlines, their films must be ready to premiere in January, and not just for their lecturers and fellow classmates. There is an annual public screening for anyone who wishes to bear witness to the work of their peers. Those who wander amongst them around what is now to them, a giant film set.
Practical experience
When asked if she is enjoying the module and all its undertakings, Eavan’s reply is instantaneous: “It has been a really, really great experience.” Most of the film studies courses previous to this endeavour have been theory-based. It’s interesting for the students now to tackle a more practical element and to be pushed into the real life challenges of film-making, Eavan explains. This is an area many of her classmates also wanted to experience. She is in the final throes of both films as both are being shot at the same time. The first, her own pitch, “Soundtracked” provides an ingeniously intriguing plot: a girl who wakes up each day to an unsolicited soundtrack of her own life, which she is unable to stop. The second, the extremely wittily titled “Locked” is directed by Alex Black and tells the tale of two girls on a night out, one of whom is extremely drunk and another who is stuck inside a toilet cubicle. Before I leave Eavan in peace to enjoy her lunch, I ask her why she feels more students aren’t aware of all the films made year on year right here on their own turf. She pauses for a minute and replies that while she isn’t certain of this, she feels many students of the college would find it interesting in viewing films set around Trinity campus. This is undoubtedly true. What better way to appreciate the beauty of our campus than on the big screen?
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
9
Crossing the line with study drugs For some students, the side effects of concentration enhancing drugs like Adderrall are a risk worth taking.
“ Daire Collins Multimedia Editor
From top, clockwise: Joe Duffy, USI education officer; Patrick de Roe, spokesman for the Molesworth St. occupation; student leaders including Eamon Gilmore, USI president, in the centre. Photos: Student Movement Research Project, Irish Social Change Archive, DCU
Union of Soviets in Ireland Union of Students in Ireland (USI) leaders found themselves at the centre of an ideological tug of war from the 1960s onwards. Maurice Casey Contributor In the early 1980s, the congress of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) witnessed one of the most dramatic moments in the history of Irish student politics when a young Joe Duffy accused its leadership of being “a puppet of Moscow”. A swathe of students joined Duffy in a walkout protest, decrying the increasingly pro-Soviet line the union was perceived to have developed over the preceding decade. The protest focused a lot of media attention on the USI, and many journalists were bewildered by what appeared to be a Soviet infiltration of an Irish student organisation.
Support for GDR and USSR
Looking at the USI’s resolutions for one year in the 1970s, one can immediately identify with their confusion. In 1975, the USI was so enthused by the East German regime that it resolved to “congratulate the GDR on its entry into the United Nations.” Clearly dismayed by the negative press image those irascible western journalists had been giving the Soviet Union, the USI decided to affirm that “the USSR is not an imperialist nation” and, just to stick it to the naysayers, put it on record that “anti-imperialist struggles across the world would have been much more difficult without aid from the USSR.” Why was an umbrella organisation for students on a soggy island northwest of the continent engaging with international concerns? More pressingly, why were they doing so from the perspective of the Soviet Politburo? This astounding sequence in the history of Irish student politics is intimately tied to the wave of radicalism that swept the European continent during the sixties, radicalising the Irish Republican movement and many Irish students. Several groups and individuals associated with this telling moment in the USI’s history emerged from radical groups incubated within Trinity. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States fought an almost imperceptible battle through the proxy of international cultural movements. As the East bloc opened up in the twilight years of Soviet communism, it came to light that a number of organisations had become infiltrated by both sides to craft them in the image of their
masters. Allegations began to surface from western intelligence groups that a number of associations had been manipulated by Soviet agents, such as the Pugwash Conferences and the Esperanto Peace Movement, in order to convert them into organs of propaganda. With these revelations, public attention soon turned to the International Union of Students, a worldwide association of university student organisations that had originated in the hopeful atmosphere of international cooperation following the Second World War. Formed in Czechoslovakia and largely made up of student bodies in nations under Soviet influence, the IUS appeared to have been conceived independently of the Communist project. However, when the United States saw the organisation emerging beyond their sphere of influence they funded the establishment of a rival group based in the Hague, the International Student’s Conference. As a counterreaction, the Soviets targeted IUS and dominated the group with relative ease during the early 1960s. In 1968, the USI held a vote on whether they should affiliate with the IUS or the ISC. In its essence, the vote decided which Cold War front the USI would align with. The Irish students of the 1960s, often portrayed as a conservative throng drenched in holy water to make themselves immune from the radical currents and bohemian ways of the continent, chose the IUS.
Stickies
To explain this decision, which passed almost unanimously, one must look to the ‘Stickies’, a small but highly influential splinter group from Sinn Fein also known as the Worker’s Party, a political branch of the Official IRA. Many historians have claimed the Stickies received official recognition from the USSR to pursue Sovietstyle communism in Ireland. The name ‘Stickies’ came from the adhesive they used to pin Easter Lilies to their clothing which distinguished them from the Provisionals, who used a metal pin. The Stickies had a concerted campaign to influence the USI, noting early on that the 55,000 strong student community could provide an easily manipulated yet nationally respected platform from which to preach their Marxist revolution. Republican Clubs were set up in universities to recruit left leaning students for the movement.
Trinity would defy the Unionist stereotype and become the first Irish university to officially recognise one of these clubs. Of the seven TCD representatives that voted in the 1968 affiliation vote, six voted for IUS, all of them members of the Republican club. The group had an earlier precedent in the ‘Promethean Society’, an intensely cerebral circle of Trinity undergrads who met weekly in House 36 throughout the 1950s to discuss Marxism in Ireland.
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A young Eamon Gilmore even got to attend a summer camp in Cuba as a result of the USI’s stance. Stickie influence is clear to see in the anti-colonial resolutions mentioned above, that sought to echo out into the wider world. Yet the resolutions were not the only international aspect of the USI’s engagement with the anti-imperial struggle. USI delegates appeared throughout the seventies in a series of locations marked either by their postcolonial turmoil or Stalinist sympathies, such as Romania and Vietnam. A young Eamon Gilmore even got to attend a summer camp in Cuba as a result of the USI’s stance. These trips were fully funded by IUS (read: the Soviet Union). Cathal, a former UCC representative, can recall being awoken one night in the late seventies by a surreal phone call from the USI president, Liam Whitelaw: “He asked me if I was prepared to accept a nomination to represent USI at an international conference.” This was the first time Cathal had heard of the conference and immediately asked where they intended on sending him: “Iraq, Liam told me, but added as reassurance that it was fully funded by the IUS.” A group of radical Iraqi students had established an IUS branch in the Middle Eastern state and where on the hunt for international solidarity. The IUS, almost certainly using Soviet ko-
peks, was funding students from across the globe to go out and support them. “I was certain that this was an attempt being made by the Stickies to win me over and I categorically refused.” Cathal noted “in hindsight Whitelaw was sincere, and I denied myself a free trip to Iraq.” Perhaps, the fact that most uniquely demonstrates the peculiarities of the scenario is this: for eleven years a Trinity graduate was made USI’s permanent representative to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia.
Trinity radicalism
Trinity proved particularly prolific in providing revolutionary USI delegates, though it would also give rise to their tireless opponent: the self-described ‘radical Catholic’ Joe Duffy. Opposition to the Soviet influence of the USI occurred as early as 1976, when a motion to condemn repression in the Eastern Bloc was shot down. Upon election as education officer in 1980, Joe Duffy managed to herald a period of USI perestroika, though he would still need to contend with the peculiarities of the USI president Brendan Donlon, an ardent devotee of Mao Tse Tung’s revolutionary teachings. Cathal noted that Donlon would often perform astounding feats of ideological acrobatics to balance USI mandates and Maoist dialectics: “When he found out I was gay he told me ‘Cathal, we support your struggle for rights at this juncture, but don’t you realise your sexuality will cease existing when the revolution comes? Homosexuality is, after all, an aberration of modern capitalism.’” Originating largely from Trinity and DIT Bolton Street, Ireland’s Maoist ideologues believed that only two governments truly held the potential to liberate their people: Mao Tse Tung’s China and Enver Hoxha’s Albania. The moment for a broad based peasant insurrection in Ireland had long passed, but this didn’t stop the agrarian revolutionaries from getting into violent altercations with Limerick Street preachers and complaining to the Junior Dean when copies of Mao’s teachings were burned outside of Front Gate. David Norris can recall one particular science student who would verbally assault the campus bourgeoisie: “He used to stand on the steps of the Dining Hall brandishing his Little Red Book denouncing myself and others, shouting ‘There goes Norris, the counterrevolutionary lackey!’ I loved it
really. I almost got up and joined him.” The Stickies retained a residual grasp on student politics into the early nineties but Maoism withered away within years of its development. It became an embarrassing chapter in the lives of a generation of Trinity graduates, many of whom saw their revolutionary fervour redirected into upper middle class careers far removed from the fulfilling proletarian lifestyle they had once envisioned. The USI disaffiliated itself from its Cold War battle along a similar timeline. The true extent of this story cannot yet be told as the USI archives remain closed to the public. An enquiry into when researchers might be able to peek inside this treasure trove of incidental Stalinism resulted in the unfortunate but telling typo: “We hope to have them open by 3016.” This moment in the USI’s history evidences a broader and current issue. Students are frequently targeted by groups wishing to promote an agenda, even agendas that would normally be anathema to the broader student populace. One piece of evidence for this is the recent Elie Wiesel Peace Conference held in Trinity. Many of those who attended lauded the statements of Wiesel with regard to the undeniably important task of remembering the crimes of the past. However, in doing so, the same students, many of whom would come to proliferate their Facebook timelines over the summer with statuses decrying Israel’s actions in Gaza, elided over the discomforting statements made by Wiesel denouncing the Palestinian people’s national aspiration. Furthermore, no mention was made during the conference of the many controversies attendant with Wiesel’s discussion of the Holocaust, such as the arguments of many historians that Wiesel has played down the deaths of Romani and Armenian victims of the same genocidal processes. One of the most laudable functions of the university as an institution is to promote issues that the rest of society takes some time to catch up with, yet this function must be bolstered by critical thought. Student movements must look to the mistakes of the past to avoid contradicting inherently progressive ideals. The USI’s brief foray into the international project of Soviet communism is one such didactic moment that warrants our attention.
Town was bustling, as people ran from shop to shop, rain bouncing down around them. From inside the coffee shop, all one could see was blurred figures dashing about, the misted windows rendering their anonymity complete, providing an apt setting for an interview with an anonymous source. A student, who we'll call Ben, glanced up from his coffee, the foam slowly dissipating into the middle of the cup. “You know, I feel pretty bad about this. It’s sort of cheating,” he said, breaking a momentary silence. The majority of students have been guilty of smudging that incredibly fine line between cheating and breaking the official rules. One doesn't need to look far: spend a day or two in the arts block and you’ll bitter murmurings about classmates who lied to receive an extension, boasts from the legend who faked his whole bibliography, or the recriminations of the unfortunate plagiariser who got caught. Yet, these are such common measures, frequently carried out by the most desperate students, scrapping for a pass, a 2:1 or a 2:2 depending on their course that we mostly dismiss them. That’s why the “illegal” use of prescription medication is such a fascinating area. Do these psychological stimulants cross that moral line, the line that is already one step beyond what is officially cheating? Does it cross the line, where we as students can legitimately stand up and say that is unreasonable? Relativity is the crux of the issue. If we are an average arts students, just about getting that low 2:1, working hard, in the run up to deadlines, and lounging around in coffee shops the rest of the term, we’re unlikely to be bothered by the struggling slacker who tries every trick in the book to scrape a pass. However, when it is our own rival, a competing student of equal ability, their bending of the rules is more of a cause for concern. Even then, however, many take the view that the risks of cheating accompany the benefits, and for the most part, the benefits of bringing notes into an exam or using fake references are outweighed by the risks and the costs that come with being caught. It is the hidden side to medication that upsets this relatively successful balance of equilibrium between those who bend the rules and those who do not.
Adderall
Prior to Ben’s grim statement of fact, we had been discussing his recent use of drugs for studying. He had been using a brand with very similar effects to Adderall, a drug designed to enhance people with ADD ability to focus and concentrate. The effect is similar on those not suffering from ADD, with certain aspects of memory retention being enhanced coupled with an increase in alertness.The effects of the drug differ from person to person, and as Ben never got prescribed it, the drug he took wasn’t catered to his body. Despite this, Ben sincerely praised the drug. With essay deadlines looming and little work to show, he felt left with no other option. It kicked in fast and hard, and even listening to Ben’s description of his experience felt like I was being sucked into some sort of twisted American pharmaceutical ad. The frequent visits to Facebook, Reddit and Buzzfeed were gone, no longer was he distracted by the clickbait article that flood the web. “I wanted to work, I’d briefly go onto Facebook only to immediately say to myself what am I doing, and return to my essay. I really wanted to work, I was enjoying it.” His eyes staring at me from across the table were filled with intensity, a real sense of admiration and amazement toward the drug rolled with every sentence he spoke. But there was something else there: fear.
Effect
Ben’s most recent experience didn’t go as smoothly as planned. The work he did while the drug was working was great, it was as good as he would normally write, but the time it took him was dramatically reduced. Adderall’s effects don’t last forever. After six hours, the impact was gone. He was back to normality, returning to Facebook with a vengeance. The essay wasn’t finished. With only hours to go and the success
It kicked in fast and hard, and even listening to Ben’s description of his experience felt like I was being sucked into some sort of twisted American pharmaceutical ad. of his last dose, there was little stopping him taking another. So that’s what he did. This is where the fear comes in. There is a risk of addiction when it comes to Adderall and its variants. This risk is not only due to the drug itself, but to its results. In Ben’s case, his return to normality meant that he was going to struggle to finish his essay on time. With a measure of shame, he told me that he took another one at seven o’clock that night. “Six hours of focussed work and I’d be finished and in bed by one a.m., there wouldn’t be any problems.” The drug worked as well as before, focused work ensued, but this time it was accompanied by lingering moments of melancholy. “I felt uneasy, I’d get sudden bouts of anxiety… I went out late for a walk around campus, it was awful, I just felt awful.” The real problems came later when the six hours were up and Ben made it to bed. He lay there for hours but sleep did not come.
Insomnia
Insomnia is an overused diagnosis these days, but there are real side effects of difficult sleeping that accompany Adderall use. For someone who doesn’t take the drug, the double dose in one day compounded this and resulted in a completely sleepless night. The issue became more serious for Ben, as he still hadn’t finished his essay. At eight a.m. when he began to work again, some of the side effects remained with him, the anxiousness and feelings of depression primarily. The following day was spent in bed, experiencing a debilitating comedown. He described it as worse than any other comedown he’s dealt with before. Yet, his essay was complete, handed in on time. It went well, a fine piece of work, indistinguishable from previous essays that were written over much longer periods. The dilemma of whether or not he would use it again was clearly weighing on his mind as we talked that miserable day. The pros were as clear as the cons, both of which making very convincing arguments. Observing his shudders at remembering the side effects and considering his very real fear of becoming reliant on it, as well as his moral issues with cheating, one would expect that Ben will not be turning to Adderall soon. As our interview ended and we moved onto idle coffee shop discussions, the intensity in his eyes faded away. The rain continued to beat down as we gathered our gear, ready to make the quick dash down Dame Street back to college. I turned to thank him, saying how difficult it was to get people talking so frankly on these type of controversial issues, joking that I was getting to the point where I was going to have to find some myself if I was ever going to be able to write this article. “I'd stick to the one if you were you. I know next time, I will” he quipped to me as he raised his hood and stepped out into the crowd and disappeared down the road.
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The following day was spent in bed, experiencing a debilitating comedown. He described it as worse than any other comedown he’s dealt with before.
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
10
Illustration: Nadia Bertaud
Gender expression in Trinity This year, Trinity unveiled its Gender Expression and Identity Policy, a document that announces College’s commitment to the individual’s right to self-express their gender. Despite this, the reality of gender identity in Trinity is stagnant and reluctant to progress, as demonstrated by the School of Medicine’s curriculum.
D. Joyce-Ahearne Deputy Editor This year, College revealed its Gender Identity and Expression Policy, the first of its kind in Ireland. The policy recognises College’s “commitment to recognise and support an individual’s gender identity and gender expression so that all members of the College community experience a positive and tolerant environment where every member is treated with dignity and respect.”
Intersex oversight
The document’s opening statements include several definitions key to the understanding of the policy. The policy defines the term “intersex” thusly: “An umbrella term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit the typical definitions of female or male. Although intersex individuals do not always identify as transgender or do not consider themselves covered by the trans* umbrella; where this policy uses the term trans* it equally applies to intersex individuals.” The policy was designed for the strict purpose of guaranteeing the right to self-express one’s identity, so to then lump one identity in with another on the first page for the sake of handiness seems surreal. Intersex and trans* are not interchangeable terms, though they are not always mutually exclusive. They do not experience the same gender realities. They do not identify or express in the same way. It seems absurdly selfdefeating for the policy to claim to seek to champion the individual’s right to self-identify and at the
same time to deny the reality of intersexuality. The document claims that “consultation was carried out with a range of administrative and student service areas, human resources, staff and student representatives and the Equality Committee in drawing up this policy.” However, Stephen Hatton, a former Students’ Union LGBT Rights Officer and a member of the working group who oversaw the drawing up of the policy, has said that when it came to intersex, it was largely assumed that the trans* consensus spoke for both. If a policy is going to refer to intersex as trans* then why not revert to referring to everyone as “mankind” or to using “he” as the go to pronoun? Though the policy is forward-looking in its commitment to the trans* community, the gross oversight of intersexuality is in keeping with the prejudices of today. Intersexuality undermines the accepted binary of sex in a way that trans* does not. Trans* still operates within the societal construct of sex as a binary. Intersexuality is the physical reality that destabilises the binary sexual power structure on which so much oppression is founded. It is no surprise then that it is the last “gender issue” to be faced. (Even assigning it as a “gender” rather than a “sex” issue is telling.) The “I” of intersexuality is often forgotten from the acronym of LGBTQI and intersex people often find themselves on the fringes of the queer community. When solidarity is not forthcoming from within the community it is little surprise then to see intersexuality excluded from a document like Trinity’s Gender Expression and Identity Policy. The policy is forward-looking, despite the gross exclusion of intersexuality. However, it is also inward-looking. Trinity, in many respects, is a bubble and the Gender Identity and Expression Policy, though a positive step, has further widened the gap between what goes on within the walls and the world outside. The policy recognises that it is limited by the national situation. It states that “Ireland currently has no Gender Recognition legislation. This policy reflects the College’s commitment to meet its obligations under these Acts [Em-
ployment Equality Acts 1998-2011 and Equal Status Acts 2000-2012] and foreseeable future legislative initiatives in the area of Gender Recognition.” Though in this instance Trinity has distanced itself from the national norm by progressing, in other ways it perpetuates both the bubble and the outside world’s reactionism by having one policy for life within the university and another for its dealings with the world outside of College. This can be seen in the ideological discrepancies between the Identity and Expression Policy and certain curriculums in College, particularly that of the School of Medicine.
School of Medicine
Stephen Hatton, a student of the School of Medicine, has attempted to enact change in the School’s curriculum, finding it outdated in terms of its acknowledgement of the queer community. As a second year class rep, he was invited to the School of Medicine undergraduate student curriculum committee, which looked at the curriculum and student progress. Hatton emailed the committee with a presentation on LGBTQI education in the medicine curriculum and asked if it could be added to the agenda but he was told the deadline for submitting items had closed. This was two weeks before the meeting and no closing date had been outlined in the email. However Hatton pursued the issue: “At the meeting I brought it up in Any Other Business and took out my laptop and put up the slide. And I was told no this is inappropriate. I said I think you underestimate the significance of the issue, may I proceed? And then the Director of Undergraduate Teaching told me that she would discuss it with me personally, right then, but that the meeting had to end. So all the teaching staff and other class reps that had been there were thanked and left. So I did the presentation and said in the preclinical years you don’t even explain what the LGBT acronym means, let alone teach us anything of any relevance to someone who is sick and may be a member of the community. This needs to change. And she said ok well we don’t want you to define a patient by any labels. You have to treat the patient holistically.
And I said that’s how the teaching is going but with this overtone of them being a heterosexual cisgender patient. That’s the patient we’re taught to think of holistically. We really need the School to recognise that one in ten patients will be from the queer community. Can you even tell us that fact, just to make us conscious of it?”
Reluctance to change
Hatton has found that the curriculum is based on an assumed heteronormativity. In a class on pelvic anatomy, a lecturer showed a live MRI of a man and a woman having sex. Hatton says that though heterosexual intercourse is deemed acceptable to show to a class, if the same thing were to be shown with two women or two men having sex, it would be deemed inappropriate. Queer representation is something that is found to be severely lacking in the curriculum. In another instance, following a lecture on breast cancer, Hatton asked if the lecturer could include a line on the prevalence of breast cancer among lesbians, based on a study conducted in the UK. The lecture had included the information that nuns are more at risk of breast cancer, due to not having children or breastfeeding, but refused to include the same information for lesbians. Another example saw the students being taught the modifiable and non-modifiable factors for a stroke. The lecturer included gender as a non-modifiable factor. When Hatton raised the issue that gender was indeed a modifiable factor and that sex, in terms of DNA, was a more appropriate term, the lecturer again refused to change it. “I told him that it’s a very small change”, says Hatton, “no one would even notice, but it would make me and trans* people or people who modify their gender very happy that you’re recognising this. And he said ‘This is a scientific talk. If I was giving the talk to a group of trans* people then I would change it.’ So I said to him so no one in this room is trans*? Because they’re scientists they can’t be trans*?” In a clinical lecture, an MCQ was put to the class in which a 56 year old male was suffering from abdominal pain. Several options were given, including ovarian torsion. However, this diagnosis
was treated as a “joke answer”, the idea being that, as a man, he could never have ovaries. In certain instances of intersexuality, men can indeed have ovaries. Hatton raised this issue with the lecturer and found that there was a serious lack of understanding of trans* and intersexuality: “She was a really well-educated surgeon but she asked me is it transgender before they have an operation, and transsexual afterwards?”
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The lecture had included the information that nuns are more at risk of breast cancer, due to not having children or breastfeeding, but refused to include the same information for lesbians.
There have also been examples of homophobic language by teaching staff. Hatton has heard of an instance wherein a surgeon referred to a patient as “one of those” to a student, implying that the patient was gay: “The student asked him what he meant by that? He repeated ‘one of those fellas’ and again she told him that she didn’t know what he meant until he left it.” It would appear pointless to roll out a Gender Expression and Identity Policy if it doesn’t extend to the actual teaching of students. The policy is essentially a social document, applicable to “college life” rather than academic study. As students in the Trinity bubble then, we have to be conscientious. But the information we consume for use outside of College is not subject to being updated. Hatton believes that the root of the problem is a lack of knowl-
edge among lecturers: “When the lecturers who are teaching us were being educated there was no engagement in the field of medicine with marginalised groups. And then there was a big push within the field of medicine to recognise people with cultural differences. So we’re very well educated when it comes to dealing with a different culture or religion or ethnicity. The School of Medicine has taught us well about these. We’ve had multiple presentations that we’ve had to do on diversity and patient populations but that same progress hasn’t been across all groups. The Traveller community is affected by very specific issues in health care and they don’t receive the same focus. And queer people receive even less.” In his interactions with the School and his attempts at change, Hatton has come up against a refusal to engage with queer issues which is partly out of a fear of insulting queer people, a fear which ultimately stems from ignorance. There is a reluctance to teach treating patients along the lines of queer or trans* as lecturers have said they don’t want students “labelling” patients. Hatton has likened the need for positive engagement with queer patients to that of treating pregnant patients: “The Director of Undergraduate Teaching said that she didn’t want pathologise LGBT people. That it’s not an illness, we don’t want to be offensive. But if we were talking about pregnancy and supporting a pregnant woman in hospital, no one would say anything about her being ‘sick’. She has a condition that needs medical support to be well. Why can’t we adopt this sort of paradigm for marginalised groups, including queer people?”
Progress
The School of Nursing has, by comparison, a much more engaged approach in terms of the treatment of LGBTQI patients. In first year, students have a module on marginalised groups and one of the options is on LGBTQI people in healthcare. There’s also a lecture on caring for someone who is trans*. When Hatton brought this point to the School of Medicine, the reaction was that in first and second year, students wouldn’t know anything about surgery or
hormone therapy and therefore how could they learn about treating trans* patients. This however, Hatton explains, is not the point: “I’m talking about educating people so they know what trans* is and so they know not to say ‘this man was born male but is now a woman’, so they know not to say things like that. If you just educate them on the simple basics it’s a great platform.” Hatton says there has been some progress with outside speakers coming in to the School: “As part of a weeklong module called Psychiatry and Psychology Applied to Medicine, a speaker from the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) came and gave a whole lecture on LGBTQI mental health. This had never been in the curriculum before. He was quite the authority who taught us very appropriately and it was a very enlightening talk for everyone. And it was something I commended the School on and said that it was very useful and could it be a protected part of this module?” Though the Gender Expression and Identity Policy is a move in the right direction and is something that would never have seemed feasible even five years ago, it is perhaps most useful as a tool for gauging the prejudices that remain. Intersexuality is still a hurdle that needs to be, first of all acknowledged, and then brought into the public consciousness in the way that homosexuality and transsexualism have been. The glaring shortcomings of the education College is providing its trainee doctors in the area of treating queer patients is a reflection of both the prejudices that still hold sway in society and the discrepancies between the rarefied world of “College life” and the “real world”. it would appear that there needs to be a culture change, or indeed a cultural overhaul, in how medicine is taught in Trinity. If College is really concerned with gender expression and identity it should extend this to the knowledge it imparts onto students, and not just to a proposed scheme (that is itself full of shortcomings) as to how to behave towards each other outside of class.
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
Features
11
Space to explore at the Douglas Hyde Rachel Graham talks to Douglas Hyde Gallery assistant curator Michael Hill and gallery assistant Rachel McIntyre about its relationship with the college, the focus of its current exhibition programme and upcoming shows. Rachel Graham Online Comment Editor Could you tell me something about the gallery's relationship with Trinity College, and how it came to be on campus? Michael: Originally the gallery was set up by genetics professor George Dawson. He collected art and tried to get it shown in the college, because there was no gallery in the college, or really in the country that was showing much contemporary art at that point [circa 1959]. The exhibitions were originally shown in the basement of the Berkeley library. He got a permanent gallery space in the college, and started having exhibitions. Then they built this extension to the arts building, specifically as a gallery. In the beginning the exhibitions were chosen by a committee of staff and students. Over time the gallery got into difficulty financially, so the arts council stepped in. Now Trinity provides the space, and the Arts Council provides a contribution for the exhibition programme and for operating costs. It’s in an unusual space; when you’re walking through the permanently busy corridor and you look in here, it’s like a whole different world. Do you think that the gallery benefits from its location? Michael: Yeah, it's kind of nice because it bridges the gap, literally, between the city and college... It's a way of drawing the public into the college.
Rachel: We get a lot of people coming in who are here specifically to visit the Book of Kells, and they see our sign and that attracts them to come in here as well, so that's a benefit of our location here. I think that works both ways, it’s really good for Trinity to have a good contemporary art gallery. Other universities are doing it, like the Glucksman in Cork [the Glucksman Gallery is on the campus of UCC]. I think it's something that universities would aspire to have. Michael: When international artists exhibit in this gallery, often it’s the first time they have been seen in Ireland. I think it's quite good to bring a different sort of cultural awareness, through knowledge of what artists are doing around the world, to the university. Being here day to day, do you notice much engagement from students themselves with the gallery? Do you think its something students are interested in? Rachel: The Visual Arts Society come in a lot, especially this year. They come in for tours of new exhibitions. It used to be more infrequent but this past year they've been coming in for every show. That's really good, they're always really engaged and interested. But I did feel like when I went to college here, it wasn't emphasised to us. Michael: Something we're trying to do more regularly is our Gallery 3 project, which is a project that takes place outside of this
building, on campus. It's a way of engaging with different kinds of audiences. Usually it takes on an unobtrusive format, so people might encounter art installations or performances just by going about their daily journey. What was the Gallery 3 project this year? Michael: It was in June or July, and it was two quite young artists from Dublin, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty. They did a really interesting project in the Old Library, the Berkeley library, the Museum Building, and a few outside areas around this kind of circular route. People came and picked up a map and instructions from here and then went on this trail. There was a fictional narrative, a conversation between different departments, about the idea of Trinity and the archives, the books in the library being this really substantial idea of knowledge and permanence, but mixed in with conservation elements. The stone gradually deteriorates all the time, and the books too, the paper and the ink... Rachel: It was great, really interesting. I think Ruth had done her masters research in the library archives, so she had a lot of information about and connection with the place. Does the gallery have a specific focus, perhaps on international artists, Irish artists, or certain types of art? Rachel: It started off with an international focus. It was one of
the only galleries in Dublin showing contemporary artwork at the time that it opened [1978], so the focus was on major international artists. As the years went by and other places opened up, such as IMMA, it became more focused, and a lot of the artists now would be people who maybe haven't shown in Ireland before, or have been overlooked, or haven't yet become well known, outsider artists. Then we also have a lot of ethnographic and craft things in Gallery 2. What is the motivation behind the focus on ethnographic and craft exhibitions in Gallery 2? Michael: So me and Rachel are the two full-time staff and then there's the director, John Hutchinson. He's interested in drawing connections between contemporary art and things which aren't really considered of value in the art world – for example craft and ethnographic artefacts and objects, which often have a great spiritual or sacred value placed upon them in their own cultures. They can act as a way of developing parallels and contrasts with contemporary art. What is the process by which exhibitions come to be put on here? How do you find artists, and arrange the programme? Michael: We're funded by the arts council, so we have to put in an application every year. From very far in advance, about 18 months, we have to have a very clear outline of what we'll be doing. We try to have a very consistent pro-
gramme over the course of each twelve month period where the exhibitions relate to each other, not just in Gallery 1 and 2 but sequentially. There are two main strands to the audience: tourists who pop in on the spur of the moment, and a very regular body of art professionals or art students from different colleges... those repeat visits are really important to us because people get a lot from the connections between the different artists over the year. In terms of selection, the director does a lot of research, and talks to artists for recommendations. But once the concept for the year is slotted in place, it becomes much easier. Often I wander in and feel a bit confused, so it's interesting to know there is a theme being consciously developed. What was the theme or concept this year that connected the shows?
that means that they've been preserved and kept. The Arts Building is quite striking and the gallery, although an extension, was designed by the same architect in the same style. Could you tell me something about how the physical space affects the art you show and your arrangement of it? Michael: It's really interesting actually, because you encounter the entire exhibition from above before you go down and see the individual artworks. You get a sense of the entire show and how things interrelate to each other, and the scale of things. That means it's really important when you're hanging the work to build relationships between the pieces. The scale of the place means we can show quite large artworks, but they still look relatively small because of the height of the walls. So we make a lot of use of white space. Up close, you get the oneon-one experience of the artwork as well. Could you tell me what your exhibition highlight of 2014 was?
Rachel: We had a lot of artists who worked with modest materials and everyday things, things that maybe don't have much value. For example in Peter Gallo's paintings [showing at the time of the interview] you can see lots of things, like dental floss, all mixed in with the paint.
Michael: My favourite was the Peter Gallo exhibition. I just think it’s really honest and kind of up front, you can tell he has his heart on his sleeve. He’s confronting quite difficult subject matter in a very intuitive and caring way. It's quite different to some of the posturing and posing you might see in other artwork. He has no agenda apart from trying to work out what's going through his head, and I think that's great.
Michael: It's an idea about austerity, using ordinary things in special ways or contexts. The Mongolian folk drawings [exhibited in Gallery 2 alongside Gedi Sibony in Gallery 1 last spring] were just kind of scraps and fragments, things that could have just been discarded, but they've got this significance or internal value
Rachel: I think mine was the Giorgio Griffa show. He paints colours directly onto canvas and linen, then when he's finished he just pulls them up and hangs them on the wall, and you can see all the lines and the creases where he's folded them. I just found there to be something really relaxing, elegant and beautiful about them.
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It's really interesting actually, because you encounter the entire exhibition from above before you go down and see the individual artworks. You get a sense of the entire show and how things interrelate to each other, and the scale of things.
So you've got exhibitions by Mairead O'hEocha and Niamh O'Malley, two Irish artists, opening next week. Was there a reason for starting off the year with these shows? Michael: Niamh O'Malley's work is kind of monochrome, and visually I think it suits the winter. It's quite delicate and fragile, yet hard-edged in a way so it really does suit the time of year, but it's not specific to that, it just worked out that way! Shows by Niamh O'Malley and Mairead O'hEocha open at 6pm on Thursday 11th December, and run until 25th February.
Above, from left to right: Sunayana Baruah, Luiza Madalozo, Herbert Innocent. Photos: Kevin O'Rourke
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Staying in Dublin for Christmas International students talk to Trinity News about how they plan to spend their Christmas holidays in Dublin. Claire Ó Nualláin Staff Writer Emma Collins, a third year student from Boston, is one of the many Trinity students who will be remaining in Dublin during the Christmas holidays. Speaking to me at a Christmas party in the Global Room on Thursday, she says she loves Dublin: “It reminds me of Boston and there’s lots to do. I like that the national museums are free too, and Trinity is lovely.” She also praises the DUISS (Dublin University International Students’ Society) and talks fondly of trips she went on around Ireland to places such as the Gi-
ant’s Causeway and Glendalough. But she criticises Dublin’s public transport system, as the fact that services such as the LUAS, Dart and Dublin Bus don’t operate on Christmas Day means that getting to Sandycove might prove to be problematic. She plans to spend her first Christmas away from her family doing the Christmas swim at the Forty Foot. Mila Todorova, a third year exchange student from Germany, will also be spending her first Christmas in Dublin away from her family. She says she likes that there were “lots of young people in the city and lots to do” as well as praising the rest of the country, particularly the West, saying “the Cliffs of Moher are amazing”. As
for her plans for Christmas day, she says she has been invited to spend it with a host family she had stayed with for two months, as well as other friends. Luiza, a first year student from Brazil, has no plans for her first Christmas in Dublin as of yet, but has applied for jobs. Su, a postgraduate student from India, plans to volunteer at the St. Stephen’s Green Christmas Market.
Reception
These four students came together with other international students last week at a reception in the Hamilton’s Global Room. They were supplied with brochures recommending Christmas activities in Dublin and the
rest of the country, such as the Christmas market in St. Stephen’s Green. On an advice board regularly updated by fellow international students, suggestions ranged from practical advice such as “shopping in Lidl and Aldi” to “getting out of Dublin and experiencing the entire country”. Similarly, a board where students could post their best experience in Dublin showcased the diversity of experiences, with “meeting new people” being the dominant theme. Global officer support worker Aoife talks to me about the importance of such an event. “For students not going home for the holidays it’s a great way to meet others in the same boat,” she says.
“It can be lonely on your own when most of your social circle go home for the break and this event, and the follow-up Facebook group, will give students a platform to link up with each other, whether to go ice-skating, to the markets, to the Butler’s Experience or even just the cinema.” The majority of the students staying over the Christmas are from countries such as China, India and the USA, she says, and so it would be simply too expensive to go home for the break. “Many of the students who stay for the break don’t celebrate Christmas so the Global Room reflects that by offering suggestions of winterrelated, rather than necessarily Christmas-related activities,” she
tells me. Having spent an Erasmus year abroad, Aoife recognises the importance of having such a support space. The Global Room, which is open all year around, provides an invaluable support to students abroad, operating a 9:30am to 9:00pm drop-in service where students can get advice on practical matters from visa applications to the locations of lecture halls, as well as cultural questions that may arise. Their yearly Christmas reception is run in conjunction with “New to Dublin” and the international branch of S2S, both of which provide support for students living in Dublin for the first time, whether they have moved from New Ross or New Delhi.
Many of the students who stay for the break don’t celebrate Christmas, so the [Trinity] Global Room reflects that by offering suggestions of winterrelated, rather than necessarily Christmas-related activities
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
13
Comment
I could be anyone: the aftermath of rape An anonymous student describes her sexual assault and society’s failed reaction to it. Anonymous
Photo: Attie Papas
Capitation innovation College’s culture of cuts is encouraging just the sort of innovation that Provost Patrick Prendergast has been trying to cultivate - but it’s not enough. William Earle A’Hern Business Manager There are two very clear messages being sent to students from college authorities at the moment. If the importance of budget cuts is one, then the other seems to be an encouragement to embrace a vague concept of ‘innovation’ in all that we do. For those responsible for our societies, publications and clubs, the former is necessitating the latter, quite often with less than perfect results. The news of further cuts to the capitation budget was accompanied by barely a whimper of student outrage. Perhaps this is what has come to be expected as the norm by students who are continually targeted by cuts and increased levies. Our representatives who lead the capitated bodies seem to be accepting the latest round of cuts as inevitable, despite the fact that decreased funding is quite clearly leading to a decrease in the capabilities of societies, clubs and publications. For these three capitated bodies in particular the funding cuts are having a harsh effect. While the SU and, to a lesser extent, the GSU can absorb their budget cuts across a whole range of services and activities, the CSC, DUCAC and Pubs are forced to pass on budget cuts to the student organisations they represent. This is forcing a level of ‘innovation’ that the Provost would no doubt be excited by. But where this model runs into difficulty is that despite the best efforts of innovative student leaders alternative funding sources are proving largely inadequate.
Trinity Publications
Trinity Publications, which receives the lowest share of the capitation budget, is under the most pressure. This newspaper, and its affiliate magazine (tn2), are being forced more and more to turn to alternative forms of funding. For the main part this comes from advertising, an avenue that is being pursued by all the major college publications in order to supplement their income. The University Times remains an exception in this regard, for now it receives its funding directly from the SU. However, given the current financial climate, it is worth considering
how long UT will be able to ignore this general move towards external revenue sources. For publications such as this newspaper, advertising is becoming an integral part of the funding model, necessitating the creation of a dedicated staff position. The question remains however, as the trend for college news and comment moves away from traditional print towards social media, how long will this form of funding remain viable? Student news is increasingly to be found online, across the web and social media. The number of print copies for most major college publications is in decline. Yet, ironically, the current formula for financial salvation depends upon a physical spread and penetration across college that printed media simply cannot maintain. While college news outlets move away from the medium of print, advertisers are moving in a similar direction. The nature of the low-level advertising space available in student publications means that it’s difficult to gauge the direct impact of a campaign. As a result, in many cases these businesses won’t renew their contracts beyond a single issue. On top of this, the decline of print advertising has long been a fact. It is difficult to imagine that student organisations can buck and reverse this trend. Student publications are increasingly dependent on a revenue source that simply does not exist in the volume that is being demanded. Despite the admirable efforts of many Trinity publications, small-scale advertising is simply not working. Furthermore, the necessity for increased reliance on this model has made it difficult to maintain the same quality of output as senior staff have increasingly being forced to devote their time to scrambling advertisements together before publication deadline. Not for want of trying, Trinity’s newspapers, journals and magazines cannot maintain the level of outside revenue demanded of them by the Publications committee.
Societies
College societies are in a far better position than publications, however even here funding cuts are being felt. Many societies are becoming more and more successful, running more and more events and attracting more and more student attention. In response to this, they are being
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Student publications are increasingly dependent on a revenue source that simply does not exist in the volume that is being demanded. Despite the admirable efforts of many Trinity publications, small-scale advertising is simply not working. forced to adapt their finance strategies. For the very active, the funding available from the CSC, while welcome and hugely helpful, simply doesn’t cover all of the costs of an active organisation. To this end alternative revenue sources are being sought, for example one large social can allow a society to subsidise trips and more expensive ventures. This reliance on large events, far from being detrimental to student life, is actually creating a rich and varied student experience with a large number of incredibly inventive events available. The success of this approach is however reliant on demand from members and incredibly devoted committees to realise these high-profile events.
New models
For the largest societies in college, sponsorship has been part of their funding model for several years. What’s new however
is the extension of this model to mid-sized societies who are struggling to compete in a saturated space. Increasingly this is an area that is being seen as an attractive solution to the lack of college money made available by capitated bodies. Sports clubs have incorporated this into their own funding models for many years, indeed in many respects this seems a natural fit. Far less comfortable is the match between societies and sponsors which can often restrict the activities of a society in return for a large pay-cheque. Despite this, if student organisations are to continue to provide such a range of services and opportunities for free, sponsorship and a reliance on large money-making events seem to be the only way forward. What’s clear is that student organisations are feeling the impact of budget cuts, and will continue to feel the pinch over the next few years. The Publications Committee, the CSC and DUCAC, for all that they try, cannot help but pass on some of the cuts to their constituent bodies. The support that these bodies provide should not be underestimated, nor should we seek to criticise them for losing a battle that was always weighted against them. It is important to remember that student organisations and the capitated bodies are on the same team, recognition of this on both sides would go a long way towWards presenting a more united and stronger response to future budget cuts. What’s more societies, clubs and publications should be praised for the “innovation” that they’re demonstrating right across the board. The Provost wants every Trinity student to become an entrepreneur - it would seem many already are. What’s lacking from the equation is any acknowledgement or support for this. Instead the only reaction appears to be increased financial pressure and a directive to try harder, hardly an incentive for those organisations that are struggling to adapt. College is compelling students to find new ways to fund life outside the classroom but so far this form of “innovation” is providing mixed results and gaining little appreciation. Rather than a means to succeed, for the capitated bodies, “innovation” is simply a means to get by.
cuts in numbers:
Having only been in Dublin a few short months, I still naively thought that I was going to leave this county in four years with a university degree and nothing else. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think twice before opening the door upon hearing the sharp buzzing of my apartment doorbell that woke me one November night. His pupils were dilated, his body shook with energy, and his breath reeked of alcohol. He knew what he wanted and he knew that I could do nothing about it. I resisted for a while, but after very quickly realising my sporadic attempts were being made to no avail, I stopped. I was emotionless, at least that’s what I told myself. I waited what felt like hours for it to be over. Eventually, his friend phoned him and he left “for something better”. I didn’t tell anyone that night. I didn’t tell anyone the next day or the day after that either. For months, I stayed quiet. Over a year later, I’m still not sure why I stayed quiet. I suppose I didn’t want to admit that something so unthinkable could have possibly happened to me, but mostly, I was so horribly afraid of what he would do. I have spent every day since in denial, shame, regret, and more than anything, fear. I have denied myself the opportunity to heal by hiding in my self-created shadows of shame. Rumours still exist in my circle of friends that I was the one that took advantage of him because I was sober. I guess I was just too polite or passive or something to justify sticking up for myself, but in hindsight I regret not screaming the truth. But when I go to sleep every night, I don’t think about any of that. I think of him. The image of his face exactly as it was that night will never escape my mind, and it will never cease to terrify me. To this day, I haven’t done so much as kiss a boy without being physically ill within 24 hours. And I probably never will.
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The image of his face exactly as it was that night Overall funding will never escape reduction my mind, and it will never cease to terrify me. To this day, I haven’t Dublin done so much as University Central Athletic kiss a boy without being Club (DUCAC) physically ill within 24 hours. And I probably Central never will.
€100,199
€17,690
€17,916
Societies Committee (CSC)
€16,229 Students’ Union (TCDSU)
€2,998 Graduate Students’ Union (GSU)
€2,424 Trinity Publications
Personal expression
That being said, I didn’t write this article to victimise myself. I didn’t write this article to demonise my rapist. I didn’t write this article to shame my “friends” that were quick to judge the situation. I have come to a fuzzy conclusion that I owe this article to myself. Personal expression could be the element, if any element exists at all, that will be helpful. I have spent over a year in nearly complete silence, and that was over a year too long. I, like most foreign college students, initially became friends with the people it was easiest to be friends with at Trinity rather than people that were psychologically tested to be suited to me. I met a few Americans at a party the first weekend I was here, and by way of convenience, became friends with almost exclusively their friends. They partied, drank, did drugs, dealt drugs, and did just about everything else imaginable other than go to college or study. I distanced myself from the negative aspects of their personalities and ultimately decided it would be far easier to warp my vision of them into something positive
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The unwanted hook up in your own dorm room with a friend you’ve known for months can be, and in many cases, is also rape. than to venture off obliviously in the attempt to make new friends with no guarantee of any sort of remote success. Most of my friends were boys. Being a relatively heterosexual female I felt like I was viewed as “hot property” amongst the boys simply by virtue of not having a third eye. I viewed this part of rape culture just as “the way things are.” Like many young women, I had been socially coerced into almost appreciating the subtle touches and vulgar nuances. We live in society that tells women not to get raped but never mentions anything to men about not raping women. Unfortunately, not even the biggest herd of the angriest feminists will ever put a definite end to the issue of sexual assault and rape throughout college campuses across the world. A short article that only a small percentage of the Trinity population will glance over probably won’t do it either. But I don’t think that means we should be silent about sexual assault and rape. Yes, it feels awkward and embarrassing, but it shouldn’t be. Like every other relevant issue within current society, its’ relativity is created by the public. Women in college are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other demographic. But most college women, myself included, don’t report incidents for reasons such as denial, fear, or just plain old confusion. The media presents rapists as being satanic old buck-toothed men with axes in hand, but that’s not always the case. The unwanted hook up in your own dorm room with a friend you’ve known for months can be, and in many casees is also rape. Personally, I have never been and probably will never be able to execute revenge, no matter how poetic or retributive it may be, so I have found it hard to find peace after I was raped. I suppose the only internalisation I’ve made about it is that we shouldn’t be so quick to assume that we are always the “good” person and that our experiences in life are always “bad”. We all make mistakes. I don’t mean to imply that anyone ever deserves misfortune, but I suppose no one us has the right to be exempt from it either. Above all else, I now possess a hypersensitivity to my own emotions and the emotions of others. If anything, I have learned to be hypersensitive to these emotions upon painfully realising that very few other people are. Of course, I should not spitefully assume that everyone else in the world is as emotionally unstable as I am, but I also can no longer ignore the possibility. I will (hopefully) leave Trinity with a degree, but I will also leave with this new perspective. Normal students, just like us, get raped. And normal students, just like us, rape people. Intentionally. Frequently. Unapologetically. Inconspicuously. Below is a list of supports available to all of us who have been affected by sexual assault, whether directly or indirectly. If you would rather talk to a normal student like me, please do so. A word of caution though, I could be anyone. Dublin Rape Crisis Centre: http://www.drcc.ie/ Student Counselling Services: https://www.tcd.ie/Student_ Counselling/ Women’s Aid: http://www.womensaid.ie/ One in Four: http://www.oneinfour.ie/ Please Talk: http://pleasetalk.ie/tcd/
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Comment
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Being a rural student in Trinity is hard The life of the rural student is a delicate balancing act between farm and city life. Doireann Ni Chonghaile Staff Writer Fast-forward a few years and you are one of them. You’ve perfected your own brand of shabby chic fashion. You spend hours each day in hipster coffee shops, drinking overpriced blends that you hadn’t even heard of before you moved to the city, and discussing the newest cult TV show. You are, to the naked eye, the quintessential Trinity wanker. But the truth is that your life is a delicate balancing act. When you go home, whether it’s every weekend or only during reading week and Christmas, you live a completely different lifestyle. You help out on your family’s farm. You talk about nothing but the weather, in detail, with every person you know. You don’t see public transport – or sometimes anyone outside of your immediate family – for days on end. You pack lightly when going home not because it’s a long way to bring a big suitcase, but because you have a whole other set of clothes for wearing at home, ones that won’t get you laughed out of the local pub.
Discrimination
You’re the only one of your friends who moved to Dublin for college. Some of them pointblank refused to put any Dublin colleges on their CAO, without really knowing why. You listen to their stories about Galway, Limerick, or Cork with interest, but they don’t want to hear about Dublin. It’s too foreign, too unfamiliar, too big. They can’t relate. All the bad things happen in Dublin. Dublin is where people go when they don’t plan on coming back. Any attempts to talk about college get interrupted with “Oh, well if that’s how they do it in Trinity...”, as if essays, exams, and admin fuck-ups aren’t universal to every Irish university. As if it’s a whole other world. Similarly, if you even mention something “townie” the inevitable response is “Sure, tis far from that you were raised!” - a phrase that jokingly gets thrown around a lot, but which effectively shames people into shutting up by accusing them of somehow betraying their upbringing. It’s a joke, obviously. It’s not meant to cause offence. Just like every other Dublin joke or “Trinners for winners” comment, it seems good-natured. But when you’ve heard the same exact comments
a hundred or so times, they don’t seem so funny. In fact, they start to sound the slightest bit malicious. Is this a prejudice against Dublin, or Trinity, or both? Things might be different if you were studying Ag Science or Veterinary Medicine in UCD, something “useful” that people who’ve worked in manual jobs their whole lives can understand and empathise with. But if you’re in Trinity, the assumption is that you’re studying something artsy and “useless”. Even if you’re not – say you’re studying medicine or engineering or pharmacy – sure why would someone with a fancy degree like you want to be hanging around with people who never got past the Inter Cert? Your friends and family worry that you think you’re better than them, no matter how much you try to tell them that Trinity is nothing special. Of course, there’s also the stubborn image of Trinity as a Protestant and/or English college to contend with, despite the fact that, like most young people, few Trinity students are more than marginally religious. Contrary to popular belief, it was the Catholic Church, not Trinity itself, that banned Catholics from attending up until 1970, but the more Catholic residents of rural, often nationalist-leaning, areas are still put off. That’s not to say that people from the country are closeminded or judgemental – far from it. They’re proud of you for getting all those points, for daring to move so far away on your own, and they’re always pleased to see you when you come back. You get introduced to important people as “This is X, she goes to Trinity” (yes, that has happened to me). But there is a sense of distance, and of sadness too. As if they think every time they see you will be the last. Soon you’ll have a fancy important job that they don’t understand, and you won’t have time to come home anymore.
Stereotypes
They’re not completely unjustified. Statistics show that 13% (over 165,000) of Dublin residents were born outside of the capital. For some comparison, that’s more than the entire population of Tipperary, and twice the population of Galway city – and given the lack of maternity hospitals in nearby counties, the actual number of residents who grew up outside of the city is likely much higher. So if so many
Dubliners come from a rural background, why is it so difficult for newcomers to fit in? People all over Ireland seem to have a set idea of what a “Dubliner” is, and will try to conform to that idea, despite the fact that that what they think of as a Dubliner is probably clichéd, outdated, and based on Fair City. Dublin is a varied, multicultural, constantly evolving, slightly ridiculous city, and neither its people or the people of any other city or county can be summed up in one sentence, one paragraph, or one article. Stereotyping, as always, leads to an endless self-perpetuating cycle of people who feel the need to choose one “side” over another, who don’t think they can be Dubliners without betraying their family and upbringing.
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If you even mention something “townie”, the inevitable response is, “Sure, ‘tis far from that you were raised!” a phrase that jokingly gets thrown around a lot, but which effectively shames people into shutting up by accusing them of somehow betraying their upbringing.
Illustration: Marina Bogautdinova
Personal change
These attitudes can result in a feeling of isolation. Stuck between two worlds, your family thinks you’re a posh city-slicker, while your college friends think of you as a culchie – or worse, think your background is “cute” or “quaint”, despite actually knowing very little about it. You feel the need to be a “real” Dubliner (whatever that may be) while in Dublin, but this leaves
you alienated when at home. On the other hand, you can never really go back to being the same person you were before you moved to the city. College has changed you, likely for the better, but that doesn’t mean you have to ignore or even deny your other life. It might be tough, but you can live both lifestyles without feeling you’re somehow abandoning a part of yourself. You’ll need to put up with a lot
You’ll need to put up with a lot of bad jokes, most of which you’ll laugh along with. But don’t be afraid to defend yourself either. Sometimes you might need to say “Yeah, I go to Trinity, so what?” or “So my dad’s a farmer, what’s your point?”, which tend to shut most people up pretty fast. As Trinity students, we have a certain image we need to contend with - one that’ll probably
never fully go away. We’ll endure the jokes and the snide comments, but at the end of the day, as long as you’re where you want to be, what does any of the rest of it matter? Yeah, it may be tough. But facing and dealing with criticism and mockery is an essential life skill that you will be thankful for later in your hopefully long and successful life.
Is post-human humanism possible? In the light of Stephen Hawking’s warning to humanity, it’s time to take a look at the moral issue of continued advancements in artificial intelligence.
Conor McGlynn Deputy Comment Editor Last week, Stephen Hawking became the latest public thinker to speak out about the dangers that arise with advances in artificial intelligence. He did not mince words: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”. Hawking, like many before him, thinks that humans may bring about their doom through technological advancement, and that it is an ultimately Icarian endeavour that will lead to the final fall of the human race. Hawking hardly belongs to the camp that may be dismissed as technophobes or luddites. His warning concerns the real possibility of the creation of a computer so sophisticated that it we humans would not be able to fully comprehend or predict it. Such a technology could redesign and improve itself at an increasing rate. A technology so uncontrollable could pose an existential threat to humanity. Such an event is commonly referred to as a singularity.
Science fiction
This is a story that is familiar to fans of science fiction. Many classic films of the genre have dealt with robots or computers that turn against their human
masters, such as HAL in 2001 and Skynet in Terminator. The dystopian vision is not, however, a story that everyone buys. Socalled “singulatarians” actively work to bring about friendly AI, and think that it could be instrumental in ending some of the most persistent and fundamental problems that humanity faces, from poverty to global warming. There is even a research institution, the Singularity University, funded by technology powerhouses such as Google and GE, that is putting considerable resources into creating such a benevolent AI. There are also sceptics who, for a number of reasons, doubt that we will be seeing the singularity at any stage in the near future, if at all. They point to the huge complexity of human thought processes, and the limitations computers face in replicating such complexity, being based on purely formal systems. Certainly they are correct in saying that the computers won’t achieve consciousness; there is no danger, as happens in Terminator, of the AI becoming “self-aware”. Consciousness, as an aspect of lived experience, is sui generis. No matter how advanced we make our computers there will never be “something it is like” to be a computer. They are also correct in inferring from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems that, as computers are purely formal systems, there are certain things sorts of sentences they cannot handle. These considerations do not, however, address Hawking’s concerns about the possibility of a computer that is able to imitate human thought processes, that can “learn” and increase its own ability to process and run decision trees on information. Such a computer could surpass our ability to control it, and from there it is a small step to a computer
that worked not in the interest of humanity, but against them. Again, there are serious questions about whether any of this will in fact take place, but there is nothing that rules it out a priori. Even as a theoretical notion, we must confront the possibility that the human will one day be supplanted by the inhuman. AI is the single greatest contender to humanity’s domination of the planet.
Life after death
The French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard considered this possibility, and entertained the idea that the replacement of the human race with artificial intelligence constitutes not a death, but rather achieving a degree of immortality. Full AI would allow humanity to preserve its thoughts indefinitely, thereby providing meaning in our individual and collective lives; lives that are otherwise made meaningless by our own deaths, and by the eventual death of our species. The singulatarians, therefore, are looking for nothing short of eternal life. As a 2012 New York Times piece said of the Singularity University, “You major in immortality”. Lyotard, however, ultimately rejects this as a genuine option for surviving death. AI, he argues, fails to preserve what is truly human, it is an inhuman form of intelligence. For Lyotard, what separates the human from the inhuman is difference; difference in thought and body that computers, operating in a rigid framework that favours standardisation and eliminates irregularities, will never replicate. Difference in human thought is seen in the unpredictability and rule-defying creativity of human reasoning, unpredictability that is alien to computers in its inefficiency. Humans exhibit difference too in body: Lyotard iden-
tifies sex and gender as features unique to humans that will never be replicated in AI. Our replacement by AI will not preserve these distinctly human traits. Instead, it will be a survival of inhuman reasoning based on mathematical logic and binary code. Immortality comes at the cost of abandoning the human. Lyotard sees the process of capitalism, or “techno-science”, as one of constantly increasing efficiency. By its very nature it is geared towards the inhuman, and towards prolonging information through our replacement by artificial intelligence. Lyotard calls on us to resist this advance by reaffirming the significance of the human, and of humanity in general. This latter-day humanism involves protecting what is “proper” to humankind from encroachment by the inhuman. This raises the most pressing moral issue we now must face: How far should we let AI develop in the pursuit of efficiency, and where should we draw the boundaries of the properly human sphere? Protecting human difference, according to Lyotard, is of paramount importance if we are to protect humanity itself. This may well come at the cost of not pursuing potentially beneficial technologies, and of curbing scientific invention and discovery. In order to preserve humanity, we must in some sense go against human progress. Some may argue, of course, that humanity is not worth preserving, and that the preservation of knowledge and learning in the inhuman is more important. This point about the value of humanity itself is open to debate. What Lyotard rules out, however, is any possibility of a post-human humanism. If we feel that humanity is worth preserving then we should take Professor Hawking’s warning very seriously indeed.
Illustration: John Tierney
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
15
Bishops’ hypocrisy on equal marriage The Irish Catholic hierarchy has no right to invoke the rights of children in service of their political agenda. Jack Eustace Contributor
Illustration: Illustration: Emer Ó CearbhaillIlIllustration Emer Ó Cearbhaill
Mairia Cahill case embodies long history of abuse That a politician who has made the remarks that Cahill alleges Adams to have made should become one of the coalition leaders of any republic, let alone one with Ireland’s past of abuse, is unconscionable. Luke O’Reilly Contributor On November 25th, Mary Lou McDonald pulled out of a talk she was scheduled to give to the Trinity branch of Ógra Shinn Féin amid a protest in support of Mairia Cahill, who has accused Sinn Féin’s president, Gerry Adams, of covering up her sexual abuse at the hands of an IRA member. Why has Mary Lou McDonald become linked to the media furore surrounding the Cahill case? She has yet to be in any way connected with the alleged events of the rape, IRA trial and subsequent cover up, yet she remains subject to a lot of the media’s recent attention around the case.
Complicity
This is due to two reasons. The first is that McDonald has become the face of the southern branch of the party, due to being from the south herself and the vice president of Sinn Féin. As well as this, she is notable for her public condemnation of sexual abuse by the Catholic church. She is on the record as saying that, ‘’Anyone, including Gardaí, found to be complicit in the cover up of child abuse must be arrested and made to face the full rigours of the law.’’ The
Cahill case has led members of the media to draw parallels between Sinn Féin and the Catholic church in covering up abuse. McDonald has rejected any such parallels. Her recent Dail sit in, which she says was in protest to Joan Burton’s failure to satisfactorily answer her question is claimed by Labour and Fine Gael as being an attempt to draw attention away from Cahill’s allegations. McDonald refused to take her seat leading to the Ceann Comhairle suspending the Dail. Yet for all of the attention focused on McDonald she has no substantial link to the case. The real political issue here for the Republic is what the Cahill case says about the people’s perception of Sinn Féin and its leader Gerry Adams, and Irish politics itself. Cahill claims to have been sexually abused by Martin Morris over a prolonged period and that afterwards she became subject to a series of kangaroo court trials by the I.R.A. in response to her allegations about Morris coming to be known to them. In terms of what actually happened, nothing has been proven in a court of law. Three trials were scheduled to go to court. One for the charge of IRA membership against Martin Morris. the second for the charge that Martin Morris raped Mairia Ca-
hill when she was 16. The third that Seamus Finucane, Briege Wright, Padraic Wilson and Agnes McCrory were charged with a number of offences including membership of the I.R.A. and conducting an investigation for the IRA. The only trial that went ahead was over Morris being a member of the I.R.A. It collapsed after the prosecution stated that they would be giving no evidence against him. Following that, Cahill then pulled out of the other two trials leading to all charges being dropped. How this could link to Sinn Féin in the south takes shape in the form of Gerry Adams. Cahill claims that she met Gerry Adams and discussed her abuse with him. Among the insensitivities attributed to Adams is that he insinuated that Cahill may have enjoyed the abuse that happened to her. Cahill quotes him as allegedly saying ‘Abusers can be extremely manipulative, you know, sometimes they’re that manipulative that the people who have been abused actually enjoy it.’
Popularity
In the latest poll in the Irish Times, Sinn Féin’s popularity has taken a minor hit due to the Mairia Cahill case. Around 10% of Sinn Féin voters say that it would impact the way they voted. However, 15 percent say that
it has actually made them more likely to vote Sinn Féin. This is probably due to die-hard Sinn Féin supporters feeling that the case is either untrue, or unfairly represented in the media, rather than due to their being pro the abuse of women. The Cahill case highlights the voter divide in this country. If you already consider yourself anti-Sinn Féin then you will proudly declare that the Cahill case is a mark against the party. If you are pro-Sinn Féin then you can fall back on the ambiguity and ignore it. Yet is there not something rotten in the republic when political allegiance governs how the people think about a case of sexual abuse against a minor? The Mairia Cahill case embodies two of the most insidious problems on this island: the treatment of children and of women. Cahill alleges to have been sexually abused as a child and then harassed as a woman for standing by that allegation. That Cahill blames not just alleged members the IRA but members of the Sinn Féin party including its leader Gerry Adams makes this case not just one relevant to Northern Ireland but to the Republic as well. Sinn Féin are currently the most popular party in the country. It is foreseeable that even if they do not
receive a majority share of the votes come the general election that they will be the smaller coalition party to Fianna Fail. Cahill’s allegations do seem to have affected Gerry Adams’ popularity. Adams has taken a fall of 9% in leader satisfaction yet is still the most popular party leader in the country with a 26% percent satisfaction rate in the MRBI poll. That a politician who has made the remarks that Cahill alleges Adams to have made should become one of the coalition leaders of any republic, let alone one with Ireland’s past of abuse, is unconscionable. The case remains murky. Mairia Cahill is an outlier, the first in what could be a series of alleged victims coming forward. Adams himself has said that he has received a list of names of others who claim to have been abused by members of the IRA and that he has passed this on to the authorities. What political implications this will have for Sinn Féin, if any, remain to be seen. What is clear is that there remains a link within the public consciousness between Sinn Féin and the IRA. As long as this link remains, Sinn Féin will always be haunted by it.
Dear white people: stop listening to white people Even when white people talk about racism, they can exclude people of colour. Naoise Dolan Online Editor Hey, fellow white people: we need to talk about the fact that we only listen to fellow white people. I realise that a white person telling you this bypasses irony and heads straight into direct hypocrisy, but recent evidence suggests we ignore people who can speak with actual authority on racism and instead privilege the voices of mugs like me - which, if true, would indicate that the mugs should at least use said privileged voices to tell you to stop overvaluing their contributions. So, here it goes: we need to stop listening to white people to the expense of people of colour, especially when it comes to issues that disadvantage the latter and not the former. If you have taken the point already, stop reading this. Go and follow some African-American protesters on Twitter. If you are sceptical about the extent to which white people get disproportionately listened to, then a) the fact that you are still reading this instead of following AfricanAmerican protesters on Twitter kind of proves the point, and b) just look at what has unfolded with the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag. This hashtag originated in response to protests against a Staten Island grand jury’s failure
to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner in a chokehold. Not long before that, another grand jury let Michael Brown’s killer off the hook. Both victims were black. Amidst demonstrations against racist policing, the hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite was born when a writer for “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon”, Jason Ross, tweeted about a crime he got away with and asked others to tweet their own stories: “OTHER WHITE PEOPLE: Tweet your stories of under-punished f-ups! It’s embarrassing but important! Let’s get #CrimingWhileWhite trending!”
White conversations about privilege
To be clear: everyone agrees that it is important to have conversations about white privilege and policing. That said though we should not lose sight of why it is important. White people are extraordinarily badly placed to inform anyone about racism. Why? Because we were always the problem to begin with. As comedian Chris Rock put it recently: “When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.”
That is not to suggest that white people should not make every effort to wake up and smell the privilege. But given that the problem with policing in America is not that white people are treated too well, but that people of colour are treated appallingly, stories of white privilege are probably less important than the stories of police brutality that AfricanAmericans have been airing long before the dawn of Twitter. The extent to which “Criming While White” has awakened white people to anything new is the extent to which those white people concertedly Were Not Listening to the stories that matter most. Shrill Cosby (@theshrillest on Twitter) summed up the issue thus: “Who is supposed to be reading the hashtag and learning from it?” Shrill noted that while the hashtag intended to deliver “stories of white privilege for other whites to see”, this centred the wrong perspectives: “you could have just listened to black ppl all along”.
Circular re-exercising of privilege
Others on Twitter observed that engaging in the hashtag to becry white privilege constituted a somewhat circular re-exercising of that privilege: @SONYAEelise summarised it as “Admitting to #CrimingWhileWhite, unafraid of social and/or criminal retribution”. Paying attention
to Criming-While-Whites, then, entails not only individually letting racial bias colour whose voices you think matter - it also means you are elevating a form of anti-racist activism that people disadvantaged by racism are genuinely unable to deploy, precisely because of the racial bias that would ensure negative consequences for them if they did what white tweeters are doing. Look. I am very obviously in no position to say whether the hashtag is helping or hindering the movement to hold racist police to account. Aside from anything else, activists are themselves divided on the issue - it would be absurd to expect a homogenous black opinion on this, or on any, matter. But whether or not #CrimingWhileWhite is necessary or useful, it can only be necessary or useful for as long as we think the people victimised by police brutality are unable to give a complete account of their own oppression. Whatever the instrumental value of white people coming forward with tales of their racial advantage, it would probably be good to work on the fact that we, white people, are creating the circumstances in which this could ever be the case. And on that note, I will now shut up. Go and follow Shrill on Twitter. Like TheRoot.com on Facebook. This article itself can only be telling you anything new if you were
failing to listen to black Americans.
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White people are extraordinarily badly placed to inform anyone about racism. Why? Because we were always the problem to begin with.
We all knew it was coming. The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference came out against equal marriage last week and, to be fair, it was such an inevitability that I was sure I wouldn’t care once it did. One of the biggest contradictions in my own life as someone without a personal religion is that I would continue to care about the conduct and views of the leaders of a church I have never been a member of. Why? Because I and nearly everyone I know was born into a society where, on some level, the opinion of these men still matters. The opinions and pronouncements of bishops like these has shaped our past and our present in a hundred thousand tiny ways, and quite a few bigger ones, creating the country in which we live. Let’s be clear about what kind of country that is. It’s not all bad, far from it, and I like to think that in a lot of ways it’s getting better. But no amount of saying, “Ah sure, didn’t we get there in the end”, will ever change the fact that this is a country where it was illegal to be gay until 1993. A country where it was impossible to get a divorce until 1996. Where 49.7% of the public voted for the proposition that there were no circumstances, no matter how irreparably broken or abusive the relationship, in which a marriage should ever be dissolved. Ours is a country of Magdalene laundries, of forced adoption schemes, of industrial schools and the endemic, systematic cover-up of every imaginable form of child abuse. And these clowns, these absolute vacuums of moral credibility, these men for whom the blanket exclusion of women from their ranks is not only justifiable, but an essential aspect of their imagined authority – from somewhere they find the temerity and the gall to throw around a phrase like “grave injustice”. And then there’s the children. Let us all take a moment and really try to come up with an organisation that should feel less entitled than the Irish Catholic hierarchy to invoke the rights of children in service of their political agenda. Never mind about the sweeping insult, staggering in the scope of its thoughtlessness, to every person on this island raised by a single mother or father, a relative or relatives, a non-heterosexual couple, or parents in a marriage or partnership from another tradition, religious or secular. Because that’s what it is to come out with something as flabbergastingly ignorant as claiming the “upbringing of children is uniquely possible” through Catholic Church-endo-
rsed marital relationships. Time and again as we approach the marriage equality referendum, we are faced with the fundamental awkwardness at the heart of any plebiscite on civil rights: that the minority and their allies must go out and ask the majority to grant them acceptance. In the service of this goal, and with the prospect of victory still overshadowed by the possibility of defeat, it has been suggested by some that the LGBT community should resist using terms like “homophobia” for fear of alienating a wellmeaning majority understandably suspicious about altering the status quo. And yes, I believe very strongly that to win a referendum, any referendum, you have to be willing and eager to answer any question, address any concern, and respect any argument. However, the right to call something or someone out as homophobic, or backward, or lacking the moral credibility necessary to engage in the debate with good faith and the benefit of the doubt from your opponents – that matters too. For so long as oppression exists, in this or any form, there will be those culpable by their silence, the ordinary majority of people who simply got on with their lives and naturally didn’t do everything they could to stand up for those left out in the cold. That’s just the way it is, and every one of them who becomes a convert to the cause of greater equality, no matter how late, should be welcomed with open arms and warm applause. But then there are those who actively take the side of oppression. Those who, rather than being caught up in or ignorant of the way things are, have a genuine vested interest in maintaining the status quo no matter who it leaves out or keeps down. These people may one day have a change of heart, and I sincerely hope for their own sakes they do, eventually, realise their mistake and alter their points of view. But until then, when they no longer stand up and mask a hatred of diversity as defence of tradition, when they no longer brush aside the hideous failings of their past whilst doing their best to undermine a better future, when they no longer take a stance that says to people: some of you different, but you’re also worse – until then we should never, ever, ever be made to fear calling them out for what they are. Because I have to ask: if opposing civil marriage equality under the guise of morality isn’t homophobic, then what the hell is? Jack Eustace is the current chair of Labour Youth.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
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Misplaced sympathy for Joan Burton What has happened in Ireland over the last five years is a deliberate, systematic and ideological attempt to reduce the living standards of Irish people. John Porter Staff Writer It was all so horrifying. The defenceless lady trapped in her car, the baying crowd jeering and banging and leaping, like gibbons throwing faeces, the heroic Garda almost overcome by the designs of a mob. Is this Ireland, a civilised country? Anywhere else and they wouldn’t have tolerated such scenes. Those protestors were lucky there weren’t shot down where they stood, as happened in Ferguson. And what sort of gall lets figures like Paul Murphy claim that it was a peaceful protest? How could anyone say it was a peaceful when poor Mrs Burton was, as she said herself, “frightened”? That dear lady was trapped in her car, unable to congratulate those students she was so concerned to see, and not at all interested in using them for political capital. When you come down to it using fear as a tactic is terrorism, and there is no doubt that poor Mrs Burton did feel terrorised. It seems obvious and correct, of course, to compare the water protestors to ISIS following the incident, as certain journalists did. It is a short step from throwing an egg to chopping off a head.
Respectable classes
The image of the crowd baying at the windows of poor Mrs Burton’s car struck a chord amongst the respectable classes, with many commentators expressing their sympathy, their disgust, their worry. I suppose seeing a middle aged lady trapped in her car by the plebeians made a few ask “could it be me next?”. It does seem to be the thin end of the wedge. Our always inspiring Taoiseach claimed that the incident, which involved the breaking of a necklace belonging to Mrs Burton, amounted to kidnapping. Mr Murphy, a Socialist Party TD, who was pictured sitting on the ground beside the lady’s car, stood in as proxy: a figure who has been elected to receive much of the criticism aimed at the crowd. The Tánaiste indeed blamed the protests and the intimidation on the presence of Paul Murphy as did large sections of the press. One of the recurrent themes in the commentary on Mr Murphy is that he is middle class. They pointed out that the recently elected TD for Dublin South West was educated in two pri-
vate south Dublin schools, that he completed a law degree in UCD, and that he comes from an established middle-class family, including an Uncle Michael, who was a “popular radio personality” on RTE. Interestingly enough the Murphy family originates initially from Castlebar, the beating political heart of the nation, which has produced not only the Kenny, but also the Haughey dynasty. At the heart of this media commentary lay the accusation that Paul Murphy was a traitor to his class. How could he align himself to the rabble against the interests of his fellows, how could he roll in the slimy street with the proletariat? How could an elected TD side with the people? It seems outrageous, I admit. Is it cynical to suggest that Mrs Burton could have left at any time she chose to? The Garda seemed to remove her remarkably easily when the decision was taken to do so. Is it somewhat misleading to describe the protests as violent when the most threatening incident seems to have been a water balloon landing on her car? Does it seem that perhaps the incident was blown out of proportion? Could it be a cynical attempt by the media to portray water protests in a negative light? How could anyone suggest such a thing? It was probably the most horrifying event to happen in Ireland for the last 169 years.
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Real fear is worrying about whether your children will be sleeping in their beds tomorrow. Real fear is taking a JobBridge placement even though you are qualified for a salaried job.
Mass mobilisation
The mass mobilisation of people around the water charge issue – there were, after all, one hundred thousand people marching through the streets of Dublin a few weeks ago – along with the surprise election of a socialist TD, Paul Murphy, really does seem to have rattled the Irish political and economic establishment. Yes it’s alright to complain about water charges, as many within the media had been doing, but don’t actually do anything about it. Perhaps large sections of the chattering classes believe it finally is time for the great unwashed to pay for their
own baths. Or perhaps they are worried that even more people will take to the streets of Dublin on 10th December in an even larger protest. This would, after all, interrupt prime Christmas shopping time, and bring further terrorism to the streets of Dublin.
Fear
What compelled me to write this article was the media reports which presented Mrs Burton as an innocent frightened victim. It is remarkable that the media have suddenly become interested in fear. It seems to me that real fear is worrying about
whether your children will be sleeping in their beds tomorrow, or the council will have evicted you by then. Real fear is taking a JobBridge placement even though you are qualified for a salaried job. Real fear is knowing your insurance scheme will be useless if you develop a serious illness. Real fear is thinking if you don’t get enough money for a hostel you might freeze to death on the street tonight. And where did this sympathy for Joan Burton come from? If she is willing to preside over a system of massive reductions in social welfare spending, if she is willing to consistently break
election promises, if she is willing to grin over the government sanctioned exploitation of workers through the JobBridge scheme, if she is willing to repeatedly attack the poor and middle income members of Irish society in favour of the wealthiest, why should we have any sympathy for her? She should expect to be attacked on the street. She should live in continual fear. If you impose a massive fall in living standards upon a people for the sake of securing the investments of domestic and international speculators you have no right to complain when the people turn on you.
Fashion Soc’s gender faux pas Trinity Fashion Soc’s apology following its offensive show was not good enough. Meadhbh McGrath tn2 Editor Trinity Fashion Society’s annual charity fashion show recently took place in the Generator Hostel. The aim of the show was to “celebrate and commemorate historical minority groups under the theme of ‘Insubordination’”. The show opened with a speech from Wendy Williams, spokeswoman from this year’s charity, Samaritans, who outlined their mission to “alleviate emotional distress and reduce the incidence of suicidal feelings and behaviour”. Williams explained: “We do this simply by listening, which can be an extremely powerful thing. [...] We are completely non-judgemental, and we recognise that everyone is their own expert on their life, so we give them a safe place to explore those options.” Williams’ speech served to further emphasise the problems with the fashion show, and it was a jarring transition from her thoughtful speech to the blatant insensitivity of the show itself. The programme reads: “From the androgyny of women’s suits, to the boho flower-power movement, from gothic & grunge to transgender & misfits, we will revel in the bravery and rigour shown by those once-marginalised people in society.” The show was divided into two parts, the first consisting of “Colour block”, “Transgender”, and “Military”. In grouping these sections together, Fashion Soc revealed their complete ignorance about trans identities. The entire show seemed to be an attempt to piggyback on topical issues by using the pretense of social justice to appear subversive. Similarly, the inclusion of a “military” section is completely inexplicable as anything other than a reference to last year’s most tired trend. Not only can the military not be categorised as a minority group, but they have also been actively used to control and carry out the marginalisation and oppression of certain groups. Military aesthetics have most commonly entered the fashion world as a trend in punk subculture, when punks appropriated camouflage prints and combat boots as a critique of systemic oppression. However, in this show, the looks were not
styled as punk fashion, and instead the military were presented as the marginalised group.
Demeaning trans individuals
As a society committed to an inclusive college, it was disappointing to see Fashion Soc exploiting “transgender” identities as spectacle, particularly when the causes they support (the Samaritans and Movember) do so much good. Although they later said in an apology on their Facebook page that the novelty moustaches were used to promote the Movember raffle during the show’s interval, Byrne Hacking, PR officer for Fashion Soc, told Trinity News after the show that the moustaches, as well as the “ill-fitting coats”, were styling choices intended to evoke an “androgynous, transgender” look, as he quite alarmingly asked, “Did you spot the transgender on the runway?” Fashion Soc claim they didn’t mean to cause offence, but by naming a section of their show “transgender”, they effectively reduced the lived experiences of trans individuals to an aesthetic or trend they believed could be recreated merely by putting a male-presenting model in a kilt (a glaring tartan one, exposing the model’s leg hair, to avoid anyone thinking he is truly “cross-dressing” in a skirt!) or a female-presenting model in a tailored suit and moustache sticker. Similarly, the excuse that they misunderstood the meaning of the term and confused “transgender” with “androgyny” falls apart when you consider that Fashion Soc decorated their pre-party area with iconography of trans* symbols and rainbow flags, hanging alongside images of military officers. Following a flood of tweets from outraged students, Fashion Soc issued an apology the next day: “We meant absolutely no offense by naming our section as such, rather we felt it was fitting within our theme of minority groups who defy odds and stand proud in society. We used the mustaches on both genders not to create a false stereotype but to promote our raffle in aid of Movember, however we have come to understand that such a use of the term and depiction could be construed as offensive to those of the Transgender community, and for that Trinity Fashion Society would like to deeply apolo-
gize for causing any upset.”
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By naming a section of their show “transgender”, they effectively reduced the lived experiences of trans individuals to an aesthetic or trend. Apology does not add up
Such an apology, which refers to groups who “defy odds”, doesn’t address the fact they described them in the programme as “once-marginalised” minority groups, implying that transphobia is a thing of the past. Damien McClean, LGBT rights officer for TCDSU, told Trinity News that he was “severely disappointed at the representation of transgender” in the show. “Trans people fight stigma, prejudgement and stereotypes on a daily basis and a big issue faced is how to present oneself. The community in Ireland are not recognised by the state, so be under no illusion: they are still marginalised and recognised as not only second class citizens but, in fact, not as citizens.” He went on to explain: “I understand that trans and gender issues are complicated but as a Trinity society, which according to CSC guidelines of following the college’s equality policy, all societies are to treat all students with dignity and respect. By using trans as a spectacle to be edgy and distinct, they are effectively excluding trans people and trans allies from participating fully in their events. From their apology, their aim was to represent transgender people as people who ‘stand proud in society’. If TFS were unable to represent the trans community in a respectable manner, they
should not have tried to do so and I feel that they should invest a lot of effort in rectifying their mistakes.” This incident indicates a clear lack of awareness about gender identity, and signals a greater need for Trinity and especially the CSC to educate students and society committees about issues of identity. “A big step in rectifying said mistakes would be raising awareness of trans and educating societies,” McClean said. “S2S and TCDSU run workshops during their training of mentors/class reps to inform people on the basics of gender identity and trans. There are many services and societies in college who provide information on gender and trans which I hope students would avail of more. It is disappointing to see the lack of knowledge surrounding trans and gender, especially in a university which prides itself on diversity and acceptance. There are organisations who provide these services (such as TENI and ITSA), who focus heavily on lifting the stigma of the community and I would hope to see the CSC educate their societies on these issues in the future.” Oliver O’Connor, secretary for Q Soc, had a different take on it. “In the last two years there has been a referendum, a number of awareness campaigns and the gender recognition policy is coming into force soon,” he pointed out. “Short of sitting down the entire college at various points in their educational career - people have to take some degree of responsibility for educating themselves, especially those who want to use these terms in relation to large events or as has often been the case, in relation to articles in newspapers etc.” He explained that “rather than getting the CSC to provide training, what we would like is to impress upon people that if you’re not sure of something — ask someone who is. If you’ve never engaged in any sort of work/discussion relating to trans issues before, you probably shouldn’t be naming events transgender without double checking first. Ask QSoc — we’re more than happy to educate and answer questions for other bodies in college be they societies or anything else.”
Photo: John Byrne Photography
What has taken place in Ireland over the last five years is not a short-term, unwanted, yet necessary fix, but, a deliberate, systematic and ideological attempt to reduce the living standards of Irish people and open the country even further to international ownership of public utilities. We should not be surprised that politicians are starting to be harassed by the public. We should only be surprised that the public haven’t been more violent in their response. Hopefully politicians will now live in the fear they have fostered upon the Irish people.
Tuesday 9th December 2014
TRINITY NEWS
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Putin’s silent children
Illustration: Sarah Morel
Young people in Russia are opinionated, but they are more worried about getting by and getting a job than political issues, a Trinity student on Erasmus in Moscow finds. Paige Reynolds Contributor Russia is a hot topic these days and generally for all the wrong reasons. With problems in Ukraine, a sharply falling currency, food sanctions and a leader who resembles some kind of Disney villain it might seem a bit irrelevant to focus on the political passivity of the country’s youth. However, understanding the indifference of Russia’s youth not only explains a lot about the political decisions made in Russia today but would also help readers in the west get a better grasp of a country which is often misunderstood. Too often, the rhetoric employed by the Western media seems to imply that the country is polarised into those who can’t stand the man himself, Mr. Vladimir Putin, and those who love him. The Russians are seemingly divided into two groups: an oppressed people longing for western-style democracy ,or a bunch of Putinophiles longing for Russia to be a great power once again. However, having lived in Moscow for just over three months now, I feel that most people fit into neither camp. Indeed, as far as the youth of Russia are concerned, I’m not sure how much the vast majority of them really care. This is not to say they agree with what is going on, behind the giant red towers that enclose the Kremlin or behind the large, overpowering columns of the State Duma. But it seems they certainly are not keen on playing an active role in the country’s politics. Politics is important. Exercising your right to vote is crucial. It is heart-warming to see how active the young people of Dublin have been in encouraging their peers to register to vote yes in the all-important samesex marriage referendum. I truly hope their efforts allow the right
decision to be made. So why do young people in Russia seem so apathetic in comparison? I suppose it might be said that the marriage referendum is an exception, and, frankly, in Ireland, the UK or anywhere in Europe, political indifference amongst young people is not unusual. But in Russia, a country that can be argued to be still, in so many ways, a patriarchal, sexist, racist and generally counter-progressive hub, why aren’t the educated youth seeking change? Perhaps in the West we have become too complacent with our own freedom. Democracy has not come easily to Russia. In fact, some would argue it has not come at all. The blueprint for the new “free” society engineered by Gorbachev et al was poorly planned and executed in Russia. This was exacerbated by Yeltsin’s incompetence and the economic collapse of 1998. By the early 2000s, or even the late 1990s, a large portion of the Russian population were left disillusioned and often pining for the days when their jobs were secure and life, although censored and controlled, was stable.
Unpopular Putin
Since Putin has been installed, it has not been plain sailing. He is arguably one of the most hated men in the West and his policies have involved the recentralisation of economic and political power, a return to nationalist rhetoric and the emasculation of party politics. The man is hardly likeable and his current actions towards Ukraine and Crimea are infuriating and, frankly, quite frightening. His path is leading Russia towards further alienation from the West. Even his recent premature departure from the G20 summit is saying something about his relations with the rest of the developed world. So why do the students in my obshaga (Russian student dorms) not care? Well, they do
care: they’re not stupid and they have opinions. But they are more worried about having enough money to get by, getting a job, having the freedom to travel and writing poetry than getting up in arms about a leader who, despite the current declining rouble, in their day-to-day lives is offering the one thing Russia has truly needed since the collapse of the Soviet Union: a sense of stability. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a vacuum of norms and values across the Russian Federation that has not been filled. According to a number of surveys carried out by sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the Soviet social fabric that was ‘torn apart but not replaced’ has left many different groups of young people from around Russia, from students in Moscow to miners in Krasnoyarsk, to feel directionless in life.
Youth groups
It doesn’t help that the youth groups that have appeared, such as pro-Kremlin group ‘Nashi’, founded in 2005, have proved largely unpopular and made a farce of youth involvement in politics. Indeed, even from the beginning, the apolitical youth it aimed to attract surely could not have been fooled by its true aim: to merely replace the ruling elite of Russia with another set of pro-Kremlin cronies indoctrinated each summer at the annual Nashi camp in Lake Seliger. These groups have become increasingly less important. The government has tried to encourage youth participation in politics from above by attempting to introduce a separate minister for youth policy. However, these feeble attempts to attract the attention of the young people of Russia were unsuccessful. Indeed, reports have shown that Russia’s youth are more inclined to support the complete destruction of the political system – even by revolution, than gradual change.
Nashi’s first objective, namely to ‘forcibly preserve’ the current political system was evidently doomed to fail. But even if the government can’t attract youth participation, why don’t the Russian youth want to help themselves? A friend from my obshaga, Ilya, does not want to see the people of Ukraine to be denied their freedom, nor does he want his boyfriend and himself to undergo any more discrimination. But he admits that at the end of the day life isn’t too bad for your average Muscovite. The imminent inflation from the sharply declining rouble does not yet seem to have affected any of my Russian friends at university. And, all in all, they’re pretty happy with their lifestyle here. Ilya loves his university, he loves his friends here and, without wishing to sound horrifically basic, there’s food on the table, enough money in the bank, and a wealth of poetry to get stuck into. Perhaps this is only true of the urban youth, indeed, to dissect this problem fully, it would probably be better to also gather opinions from industrial workers in Irkutsk but, as of yet, I have not made any pals from deepest darkest Siberia. I ask Ilya about his personal experiences of homophobia in Moscow. He says that often while walking or holding hands with his boyfriend people stare, people point, people laugh but he tries not to let it affect him. I finally ask him whether he would go to a gay rights march in Moscow. He nods his head in agreement but goes on to explain that if he slept in and missed it he wouldn’t really care. Why? Because nothing will change anyway. This is sad, but it does explain why there is often relatively poor turnout at political protests and even at elections in Russia relative to its size. The Russian people, more than any of their
Americanisation: class or a total drag? An American abroad laments the creeping conquest of American culture. Kayle Crossan Contributor Whilst other children and adults tremble in anticipation for the wonderful array of Christmas treats and rituals, as an American, I have always been that person who longed for pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce on the last Thursday in November each year. That’s right – the famous American holiday of Thanksgiving. A holiday that is devoid of religious connotation, making its celebration open to every single American regardless of faith, race, gender, or sexuality. It’s one of the very few holidays that remains unmaterialistic, as the focus has remained fixated on a big old turkey on a platter and inviting a multitude of relatives and friends to sit around it and devour it whilst appreciating all the blessings they have in their
life. Although spending Thanksgiving in Ireland is certainly not the same as being in the United States, it still remains a day of wonderful autumnal scents wafting through the house and a day for wearing tactful pants with stretched out waistbands.
Black Friday
This Thanksgiving was as charming and heart-warming as ever. However, a stream of news reports on the day began to unsettle me. Black Friday, the unfortunately notorious day after Thanksgiving for marked down prices on a vast assortment of all things consumer discretionary, was going to promoted in many shops and retail outlets across Dublin. Stores enthusiastically advertised a slashing of prices for Black Friday in the hope of boosting noticeably low consumer consumption figures. Although I can understand the
economic rationale behind this decision, I can’t help but see this as an extremely negative consequence of the hotly debated and controversial concept of Americanisation. This almost suffocating spread of American culture can hardly be seen as surprising. In what could be called an assimilating process, Irish viewers have come to accept the American accent as a norm to be heard on the screen, an additional voice that resonates through the hallways of their homes. And it is right that Irish people should feel a connection to the United States, since a large portion of Americans will claim some 4th, 5th, or 26th generation connection to the country. However, at what point does the increasing penetration and ubiquity of American culture become problematic? When does cultural appreciation become homogenisation of a country, and perhaps
even whole continent which is so rich in the arts itself? And here is where my problem lies. American culture, politics, lifestyle, and art have all become almost too accessible. The things that I love about my native country – the friendliness, the warmth, the beautiful landscapes, the unique holidays – have become images and concepts that saturate the media. As one of many university students who suffers with an acute wanderlust affliction, I can’t even begin to find the words to express the appreciation and awe that I feel when my eyes feast upon a new city, a new country, a new charming alleyway that carves its way between Edwardian buildings. These experiences are like an unexpected wave of ocean water – you never saw it coming, but when it hits you, you are inevitably swept up by a powerful current that renews
Western critics, are hyper-aware of the deeply embedded corruption that exists in their society. In 2011, there were mass protests against the supposed rigged elections, but just like most protests attacking the government, there were no long lasting gains and the criticisms found themselves kicked under the bed of corruption and bureaucracy that comprises the Russian governmental structure.
Alienation
It seems fair to say that young people of Russia are so politically apathetic because they feel alienated by their government and powerless to change and, however tainted his politics may be, Putin offers them stability and their daily lives are not really impacted by Russia’s constantly changing political situation. Unfortunately, a symptom of this apathy has manifested itself in the appearance of the Russian (hipster). The hipster creed has blown its way across the plains of central Euope. In Russia its adherents tend to reject political involvement and focus on cultivating a wildly alternative attitude to most aspects of life. It seems to me that more and more of the Russian urban youth are pulled into this wide-rim glasseswearing whirlpool every day. You see them mumbling exchanges in the darkest corners of the smoking area at yet another minimalist house night, or hopping in and out of anticafés having spent the afternoon playing ping pong with another flat-capped aficionado. These folk are more concerned with the upkeep of their impressive facial hair or making sure they show face at the next pop-up restaurant serving them another distinctly average dish in a handpainted remodelled ashtray than rallying for freedom. You know the types. And perhaps, it is these folk that the people pining for a more politically active
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At what point does the increasing penetration and ubiquity of American culture become problematic? When does cultural appreciation become homogenisation of a country?
Russian youth should really fear. They don’t abstain from political involvement because they think their vote won’t count or because they are disillusioned with the difference they could make, they are simply more concerned with their image than anything else. Indeed, as long as their limited edition vinyls are intact and that Japanese art film is still showing down the road, politics can do whatever it pleases. However, increasingly invasive intrusions into their bubble might yet provoke some reaction. The wider government crackdown on club nights and music performances is starting to interfere with Russian hipster life. Ivan Alekseev, who goes by the name of Noize MC, has a huge fan base amongst the young and trendy here in Russia. Unfortunately, after he sang in Ukrainian and accepted a flag from a Ukrainian fan member, his concerts have increasingly been cancelled and called off at the last minute. A few weeks ago, Mykki Blanco, the black cross-dressing rapper, was set to perform in Moscow’s hip, hop and happening Solyanka club. However, at 1 pm that day, the police raided the club and shut it down. Apparently, this closure was due to unsettled debts. But it does seem more than coincidental that the the police chose the day when a black cross-dressing rapper was set to perform, especially as the extreme Eastern Orthodox, anti-LGBT group God’s Will had been trying to shut down the club of so-called ‘perverts’ since the announcement of the concert. If the crackdown on music performances continues to spread to other vital parts of youth culture surely youth activism will start to rise. But as of yet, regard for political issues is still not a priority. Frankly, whether they are disillusioned, or just more concerned with the height of their beanie, the Russian youth needs
to sit up and at least try to get involved in political affairs. Corruption breeds corruption. If young people hold on to their apathy it could have disastrous social and economic consequences for the country’ going forward. Currently Russia is on the brink of a potential economic disaster and there are rumours that from January 2015, websites such as Skype and Facebook may be prohibited. This is not the kind of Russia any young person would truly want to live in – I know I’m feeling rather anxious about the future here myself. After all, fashions change and the progress of this great nation will involve more than a good selection of skinny jeans and the latest New Balance trainers.
you. But how can you have such an experience if everything is so familiar to you? How can you be pulled out by the tide if the ocean was always on a visible horizon? For me, the escalation of Americanisation crossed a line with these sickening Black Friday advertisements. It is an American tradition that I personally despise as it has developed into a primitive free-for-all. Such dramatic cuts to retail prices result in increased antagonism between different social classes, as consumerism becomes contagious and deranges even the most sensible of men and women. Its a blemish on American values that will now stain a society of a different land, will now blatantly expose the inequality of wealth that Ireland feels so acutely. Well I simply say no.
love the warmth and empathetic nature of the people, I love kindness of the strangers in Dublin, I love the way everyone here systematically bids farewell about six or seven times at the end of a phone call, and I love the resilient nature of the people in the face of adversity. Why should we let such admirable features of nation be swept away by another one? Why should we adopt a tradition of manic shopping, only further commercialising ourselves? So do as I do and unapologetically love cultural identities. Love them for their quirks, and love them for their wonderful traditions. Of course I love when people ask me about the traditions and rituals surrounding Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, but always keep in mind that St. Patrick’s Day is equally as exciting. And most importantly, if you’re Irish, always remember that your nation is completely and utterly class, never let it be radically demoted to “totally awesome”.
Language
I say no to hearing young children saying that something is “totally awesome” because they watch hours of television on end instead of immersing themselves in a book or finger painting or the rush of sprinting through a slightly overgrown field. I say no to this homogenisation, because I unequivocally love Ireland. I
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You see [hipsters] mumbling exchanges in the darkest corners of the smoking area at yet another minimalist house night, or hopping in and out of anti-cafés having spent the afternoon playing ping pong with another flat-capped aficionado.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Editorial
18
Death of Stefan Grimm is a sad reflection of higher education
Catherine Healy Editor Shortly before Professor Stefan Grimm, a former member of Imperial College London’s Faculty of Medicine, died in late Septem-
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ber, he left a message for his fellow colleagues. The preset email, which was published online last week, made it clear that his life had been made unbearable by bullying managers. Despite having a strong publication record, Grimm had been placed under heavy pressure by the university after failing to secure research funding. In the months leading up to his death, he was warned that his job was at risk, and was told that he would need to be awarded at least one programme grant as principal investigator in the coming 12 months and secure £200,000 in research income every year. The instructions were passed down in an email, also published for the first time last week, from the head of Imperial’s division of experimental medicine, who stated that Grimm would need to give “serious consideration as
to whether [he is] performing at the expected level of a professor at Imperial College.” The late professor was then told by the same person, a week before he died, that he might not be able to take on a second PhD student as he planned. This particular colleague, according to Grimm’s last email, had no interest in the progress of his work and did not attend the regular seminars held by their common department. Grimm was a cancer research pioneer, the author of 73 research papers, but he was of limited commercial use to university bureaucrats and so they made him feel worthless. That a university consistently ranked among the best in the world would deem revenue raising more important than scientific output is unsurprising given recent trends in higher education. That its henchmen would
be capable of such levels of persecution in the name of profit is downright sinister. These funding pressures of course exist in Ireland too. Private sources of revenue have become increasingly important for university departments and faculties restructured for value as central college grants are cut. But collegiality and a shared understanding of the importance of academic research must trump market demands even when research grants and endowments fail to fill funding holes. It took the death of a brilliant 51-yearold professor to get people talking about the dangers of university commercialisation in the UK. Let’s hope that conversation now begins to be heard by those at the top.
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Collegiality and a shared understanding of the importance of academic research must trumpt market demands.
Homelessness crisis must be addressed
Matthew Mulligan Editor-at-Large On Saturday night last, the Dublin Food Co-Op played host to an event which transformed the familiar warehouse of stalls and vendors into a Christmas jamboree with a purpose. The Yule Ball was held to support the Dublin Simon Community with all entry fees going fully to the service. At times it was a sombre occasion, as when the Simon Community CEO Sam McGuinness took to the stage to speak about the funeral he had attended earlier that day – “Jonathan Currie was his name.” McGuinness spoke of the fact that Currie often didn’t sleep on Molesworth Street; that by some chance he lay in that doorway on the night he
passed away and that his death confronted the members of Dáil Éireann with an issue they could no longer avoid or brush away. The housing crisis and issue of homelessness is constantly pushed away, though. Whether it’s families living in their cars, students living in hostels for college terms at a time or people like Jonathan Currie who sleep rough on the streets, homelessness has increased since the crash and so has the visibility of those on the streets. With the Peter McVerry Trust estimating that over 160 people sleep on our city’s streets every night, it is almost inconceivable as to why these figures have been allowed to grow while at the same time the songs of recovery are trumpeted out by those in government. TD Ruth Coppinger questioned Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly at an Oireachtas Committee meeting during the week, detailing a list of hotels housing families around the city – with upwards of two million euro being paid by Dublin City Council over three months to those establishments housing families. She also took the minister to task over the large tax breaks given to hotels and developers when compared to the lesser amounts given towards homelessness. Whether or not
one agrees with Coppinger or the Socialist Party, if the government is serious about eradicating homelessness during this time of crisis then it should do everything in its power to do so. Alan Kelly has pledged a bed for all homeless people in Dublin in time for Christmas through the provision of more emergency beds. In the meantime, housing families in NAMA owned hotels would seem like an ideal solution, rather than Joan Burton’s shocking desire to revisit the ban on bedsits, a ban which she herself admits was placed for “the best of reasons”. Families should be housed in warm, dry rooms appropriate to their spatial needs’ not damp, cramped spaces which have failed health and safety and fire checks. These are people with needs and requirements but also with their own desires and wants. McGuinness mentioned that Jonathan Currie was sometimes picky about the kinds of places he slept in, and there seems to be a kind of disconnect between those who are homeless and those who have never experienced it; a disbelief that someone without a roof over their head could ever turn down a bed. Just because somebody is homeless doesn’t mean that their reasoning for not wanting to stay in hostels or emergency
accommodation should be disregarded or be seen as irrational. The same detachment carried by folks when walking by those on the streets extends to a lack of understanding about the conditions homelessness instills in people, and the importance of being able to keep your dignity while looking up at faces hurriedly turning away. Of course, housing needs being fulfilled won’t mean that homelessness will be eradicated. But having a place to call one’s own, an address to put after your name when applying for services and the safety and sanctity of your own space can be essential to start seeking help for addiction and mental health issues. About a year ago on my way into College, I was reminded how close to homelessness so many people are. I was crossing the Ha’penny Bridge when a man stopped to talk to another man sitting on the bridge in a sleeping bag. “Long time no see! How’s it going Jack?” he asked the man in the bag. “It’s going alright,” he responded. “I’ve kept going. Has the office let many more go in the past year?” Everyone has a story.
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Families should be housed in warm, dry rooms appropriate to their spatial needs; not damp, cramped spaces that have failed health, safety and fire checks.
Potential TSM changes are a positive sign, but they must be supported by university administration
James Bennett Contributing Editor Last Saturday afternoon, I spent an hour on the Spanish department stall at the College Open Day. I was surprised by the fact that most of the people approaching me with questions were the parents of prospective students rather than the students themselves. On several occasions, worried looking mothers with their arms full of departmental leaflets approached nervously to ask me if there was any demand for Spanish in the employment market. When I said that the TSM arts degree could lead to many different employment opportunities, often not directly related to the field of study, I was met with scepticism. From the point of view of a parent who is about to make a massive financial investment in a degree for their child, this is a completely understandable response. Higher education is becoming more expensive every year, but its value in the workplace is going down. As more and more people obtain undergraduate degrees, many people are pursuing postgraduate studies simply to make themselves stand out in the crowd. These effects are especially felt among those studying arts subjects, which is why it was not surprising to see them indirectly addressed by the working group established to consider possible changes to the Two Subject Moderatorship (TSM), Trinity’s main arts degree. In the minutes of the working group’s first meeting, there is a list of “tentative answers” to the question “what is so great about TSM?”
The first two answers are “it attracts students who want to learn for the sake of learning” and “it attracts students who are not sure what they want to do.” To label these two factors as positive was an important step towards reclaiming the intrinsic value of studying the arts. To be able to think critically, to compare knowledge across cultures and times, or to dismantle language and see how it functions are all important skills. It is essential that we do not allow them to become devalued at a time when entrepreneurship and enterprise are worshipped in a quasi-religious fashion by those in power both in government and institutions such as universities. The move to identify and address problems within the TSM degree is coming at a critical moment. If it is done correctly, it will be a chance for the arts departments to prove that they are not as ineffective, wasteful and chaotic as they are perceived to be. It will show that those involved in the TSM course take their work very seriously, and that they should be shown the same respect as the scientific disciplines, especially when it comes to the allocation of funding. The main conclusion of the working group’s first meeting was that the lack of administrative coherence across TSM needs to be addressed. This is a course with 178 possible subject combinations, so it is naturally very difficult to manage. There seems to be a desire for a centralisation of procedure to the TSM course office, rather than the individual departments or schools. This could make TSM easier to navigate for both students and staff. However, if College does not get behind this process there is no way that the best possible results can be achieved. Trinity must show that it values the arts and humanities just as much as the sciences. The highest levels of Trinity’s administration must provide both moral and financial support for the reform of TSM. It is often too easy to forget that this university is trading on a reputation that would not exist without the great work done here in the arts throughout the years.
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If it is done correctly, it will be a chance for the arts departments to prove that they are not as ineffective, wasteful and chaotic as they are perceived to be.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
SciTech
19
Science in Brief Dylan Lynch SciTech Editor
Nature allows public sharing and reading of articles The scientific journal Nature made a huge step towards openaccess last week as it became readable to non-subscribers. The internationally renowned journal, which was established in 1869, will now be available in a read-only format to non-subscribers. Readers will be able to annotate articles and share their notes with colleagues. Scientists around the globe are heralding this change as the sign of a new age of open-access journals. Open-access means that anyone anywhere can access
peer-reviewed scholarly information without needing to be part of an institution or to become a subscriber. Nature’s publisher MacMillan has said that they intend to use Nature as a pilot trial for openaccess media and that the process will involve two stages. The first stage involves the release of papers and articles to colleges around the world. The second stage will allow major news sources and blogs to provide their readers will full text articles from academic journals to read.
UK researchers create first artificial enzymes from synthetic material Illustration: Sarah Larragy
Do we need to start worrying about the contraceptive pill? Dylan Lynch SciTech Editor The first ever method of birth control was used by the Ancient Egyptians. They used cotton, dates, honey and acacia as a suppository, which coincidentally worked as fermented acacia is proven to have spermicidal properties. There was very little development in the field of contraceptives until, thankfully, science finally stepped up its game in the 1900s. In 1951, Carl Djerassi, a chemist working in Mexico City, synthesised the first viable “birth control” hormones in his lab. This sparked a race amongst scientists to create the first human safe product, and by the year 1957, the FDA has approved the first ever oral contraceptive pill (albeit only for use in severe menstrual disorders). In 1960 the first ever human pill for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy was approved and by 1962, over 1.2 million American women are using it. Within one year, this figure doubled. Since Djerassi’s work, the popularity of birth control pills has increased exponentially, making it the leading choice from female contraception in the world. Although there has been some controversy about the dangerous side effects of the pill in previous years, these claims tended to be specific to one brand or compound only. However, a research group at the University of Salzberg has linked certain classes of
the pill to changes in grey matter volume in the brain. All contraceptive pills contain progestogens, but there are three main sub-classes of the contraceptive pill termed ‘generations’. First generation pill contain progestogens such as norethisterone. Second generation compounds contain molecules such as levenorgestrel and norgestrel, while third generation tablets tend to have desogestrel and similar chemicals in their dosage. Second generation compounds are the most common as they have less side effects that first generation and are much cheaper than the third. These pills are mostly either androgenic or antiandrogenic, which tells you roughly what their metabolism is and to which receptors they attach in the body.
Effect
The study, carried out by Belinda Pletzer et al. at the Centre for Neurocognitive Research in the University of Salzburg, involved 50 women undergoing a series of non-invasive neurological testing. Within the subject group, there were 20 naturally cycling women, 18 women taking androgenic contraceptives and 22 women taking antiandrogenic contraceptives. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of the subjects brains revealed that the participants taking the antiandrogenic pills had significantly larger volumes of grey matter compared to naturally cycling women. Conversely, the women taking androgenic pills were shown to have much lower grey matter volumes in the
brain when compared to naturally cycling women. The regions in the brain affected were the hippocampus, related to function and memory, and the fusiform face area (FFA), thought to be related to facial recognition. A sample group were then subjected to a memory and recognition test. All 50 women were shown 30 photos of different faces for a period of 30 seconds, and asked to memorise them. After the time had been elapsed, they were presented with 60 facial photos and asked to pick out the 30 that they were previously asked to memorise. The results agreed with the MRI scans conducted.“Face recognition performance was significantly better in users of anti-androgenic progestins compared to the other groups,” Dr. Pletzer has written in the abstract of the published study. When one considers the MRI study and the facial recognition study, there is strong evidence that the nature of the oral contraceptive can alter the brains structure. In Brain Research¸the renowned scientific journal, Dr. Pletzer explains what the findings can tell scientists about the brain. “Morphological differences between active and inactive pill phase were observed in users of androgenic progestins,” she writes. “These findings suggest differential effects of androgenic and anti-androgenic progestins on human brain structure.” At a glance, this study and its findings provide conclusive evidence the antiandrogenic pills reduce grey
matter volume.
Problems
But there are indications that the findings of this study could potentially be statistically flawed. The University of Salzburg researchers failed to screen for two key factors: the length of time for which an individual was taking that dosage of oral contraceptive, and the age of the participant. These two characteristics could have had a monumental effect of the findings of the study. It is possible that the reason for some individuals having altered brain structure was not due to the nature of the contraceptive at all, but the time for which the individual was actually taking the pill – any effects would only increase to a measurable rate after a lot of exposure. With regard to not screening for age, the brain develops in both size and volume until at least the mid-20s according to research conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If any of the participants were aged less than 30, it is possible that their brain wasn’t fully developed and any anomalies in grey matter volume could be due to age rather than the pill. One of the more damaging flaws of this study was the sample size. With only 50 participants involved, biologists and statisticians have claimed that the changes in brain volume could be attributed to genetic inheritance or a coincidence rather than any medication. In a preliminary survey conducted by Trinity News of 52
MND and me As Trinity begins a new DNA mapping project to discover the causes of MND, Professor Orla Hardiman, the head of its newly formed Academic Unit of Neurology, talks to Trinity News about her research. Roisin McMackin Staff Writer Orla Hardiman, Trinity’s professor of neurology, has dedicated her career to studying motor neuron disease (MND), researching its cause, its effects on the lives of patients and how it might be treated. Now, she is set to lead Project MinE, an unprecedentedly large scale genetic mapping project which will map the DNA of at least 15,000 people with MND and 7,500 control subjects.
Background
First trained in neurology in Ireland, Hardiman undertook a residency and fellowship in the US, where she worked with Dr. Robert H. Brown, who was part of a team that discovered that mutation in the SOD1 gene is linked to the inherited form of MND. She then returned to Ireland and, while running a research lab in UCD, was doing clinical work in Beaumont Hospital, where she gained more experience with MND patients. “The services weren’t very good for those people at the time,” she explains. “It was a bit like diagnose; adiós.” Seeing this, she decided to do what she could to improve these services. Beginning by setting up a register for motor neuron disease patients, she then moved to Beaumont full time in
1996, where she was appointed as a consultant neurologist. She worked to reform the neuroscience clinic there and demonstrated that those who attended the clinic had a better outcome than those who didn’t. Not only does she continue to work in the clinic as consultant neurologist, but she is also the first fully-fledged professor of neurology in Ireland, leading a research team of 30 in Trinity College, which works to understand the biology of the disease and how it could be treated. MND is a neurodegenerative disease in which motor neurons, the neurons used to consciously control muscles, begin to die. Patients experience symptoms including muscle weakness and spasticity, difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing. The disease has a high mortality rate, with most patients dying within five years of diagnosis. A large part of Hardiman’s work involves working with patients whose quality of life is deteriorating as a result of the disease. “Of course it’s upsetting,” she says. “When people [ALS patients and their families] make decisions that I think are wrong and I have to tell people that what they want is probably not in their interest, that creates a conflict and a difficulty as a clinician, and trying to understand that and work through that, and trying to make sure that the decisions that we
make are the right decisions in the right context in the right people in the right time is really very important, so that’s a big learning thing for me.”
Fundraising
Now that the fuss around the ice bucket challenge has quietened down, I ask Hardiman about the lasting effects of the phenomenon. She describes the Irish population as very generous, with ¤1.6 million was collected in Ireland, compared to ¤7 million in the UK, which is approximately 10 times larger. It was, as she accurately describes it, “pretty good work!” The Irish Motor Neuron Disease Association deals with care and management of patients, and it is to them that much of the donations will go. They have also made a commitment to donate at least 25% of what was raised to Hardiman’s team, which is currently considering which projects to use the money towards.
Challenges
However, although this money is extremely important and beneficial, the disease is far from cured, and I was interested to know if many people showed an interest in the research and treatment of the disease outside of the challenge itself. “There was a bit of a disconnect over time,” she says. “There still has been a lot of pub-
licity around the disease as well and that’s really good because it’s a horrible disease. The downside to that is that people may think that we have enough money now for our research and that’s not really true. If you compare, for example, the money that goes into neurodegeneration or MND in particular internationally it’s a fraction of what goes into cancer [research], and neurodegeneration is an area that’s growing, it’s an age-related disease, so you could argue that we should be putting at least as much into neurodegeneration as we’re putting into cancer research and we’re not, so the ice bucket is just a drop in the ocean compared to the sorts of money that we really need to sort this out once and for all.” So while the summer of 2014 is over and the ice bucket challenge seems like a thing of the past, the real challenge would be to secure future funding. Although Hardiman and her colleagues are driving research in the direction of a better prognosis for patients, the necessary research, treatment and patient care still requires a lot of money. She describes a new potential treatment which is showing multiple different beneficial results in the mouse model of MND, but it will cost ¤4-5 million to bring to human trials. Whether that can be funded in the near future remains to be seen.
students attending Irish colleges such as Trinity College Dublin, National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), 37% of participants (19 responses) were using an androgenic pill. Of this 37% ,only five students reported any noticeable change in facial recognition ability or memory retention, having taken the pill for more than one year but less than five. In the remaining group of 33 students who did instead take antiandrogenic or neither type of contraceptive, only one respondent reported having experienced any sort of memory loss in the two years she had been taking the pill. The participants were not told what the survey was about to avoid the introduction of any bias and there was plenty of room for explanation of answers. Although this survey only serves purpose as a very rough approximation of the truth, the statistics are insignificant with reference to the claims of the study.
Should consumers worry?
Before everyone starts changing their medication or trying out the ancient Egyptian method, you should be aware that studies of hormonal metabolism are still in very early stages. The brain still holds many mysteries in its functionality and pathways, and although this study may shed some light on the possible unknown side effects of oral contraceptives it is not yet known whether there is anything to actually be worried about in terms of reducing brain volume.
A research group led by Dr. Alex Taylor from the University of Cambridge has reportedly created the first ever artificial enzymes made form material not found in nature. The study, published in the academic journal Nature, details the new discovery based on the group’s previous research into XNAs, the entirely manmade genetic systems that can store and pass on genetic information in a process very similar to that of DNA.
Using the XNA molecules as a base, the scientists built “XNAzymes”, powerful enzymes that can power biochemical reactions. “The chemical building blocks that we used in this study are not naturally-occurring on Earth, and must be synthesised in the lab,” Dr. Taylor said in a press release last week. “This research shows us that our assumptions about what is required for biological processes – the ‘secret of life’ – may need some further revision.”
Genetic analysis confirms parking lot skeleton is King Richard III Conclusive genetic analysis has proved that the human remains found underneath a parking garage in Leicester, England, are those of King Richard III. The skeleton was correctly identified by tracing King Richard’s genealogical tree to his modern day relatives and performing comparative DNA testing on the remains and family members. A perfect match was found in the mitochondrial DNA of the remains and reference family
member, which finally settles the 527-year long missing person case missing person. This also makes Richard III the oldest human of known historical identity to have their genome sequenced. However, the Y chromosome data of the remains does not match with his descendants’ DNA. This raises questions about whether Henry IV had claim to the throne of England, but at this time there is insufficient data to prove this hypothesis.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
SciTech
20
Cracking the Enigma code
Trinity to map DNA in international neurology study
How Polish cryptologists cracked secret Nazi codes during the second world war.
Crowd-funded project to look for causes of MND.
Katarzyna Siewierska Staff Writer The recent release of The Imitation Game in Irish cinemas has drawn popular attention to the Enigma machine used by the Nazis to encrypt messages. The movie is based on the biography of one of the greatest British mathematicians of the 20th century, Alan Turing, who is credited with building the first computers that decoded the messages sent by the Nazis during the Second World War. This allowed the Allies to read the Nazi military correspondence, which helped the British win the Battle of Britain and indeed had a considerable influence on the victory of the Allies over the Nazis.
Background
The Enigma was discovered by two Dutch naval officers, who constructed the machine so that the Dutch would be able to encrypt their messages during the First World War. Holland was a neutral country during the way and they wanted to keep their messages secret from all other countries. After the war, a commercial version of the machine became available to companies which wanted to keep their correspondence secret. At the time, Germany was crushed and their army was almost non-existent so, by the mid 1920s, many Germans were seriously considering ways to seek revenge. The German military soon laid their hands on the Enigma machines and began testing and modifying them to improve their coding quality. The specialists in the field of cryptology considered Enigma unbreakable. Indeed, we are talking about hundreds of billions of combinations. The British knew that the Germans were using the Enigma for military purposes, but after some analysis they came to the conclusion that the Enigma is indeed unbreakable and they abandoned any further work on it. Meanwhile, in Poland, the Polish intelligence was putting together a team of the finest cryptologists in the coun-
try. One of the men on the team was to eventually find a solution to the problem that everyone in the world considered impossible to solve. The Polish team included three brilliant Polish mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rózycki and Henryk Zygalski. They received the commercial version of the Enigma machine and some coded messages, which were obtained by tuning into the German radio frequency. People could listen to the Germans, but no one could decode the messages. After a few weeks, Marian Rejewski knew that he needed to use theory of permutations to solve the Enigma. When Hitler’s Political Party gained seats in the Reichstag, a French spy in the German cryptology office delivered schematic diagrams of the improved Enigma and a list of the keys that the Germans have already used. The keys are the essential component to decode encrypted messages. Once the key is determined, all messages could be easily deciphered. The Germans used a different key every day. This information provided by the French spy was very helpful to Rejewski. He used his mathematical genius to write down mathematical equations governing the Enigma which even in modern mathematics are considered extremely complex.
Cracking it
In late December 1932, the solving of the equations and construction of the improved Enigma, as shown in the diagrams delivered by the French spy, granted access to the German military secrets. Now Rejewski was joined by his two colleagues Rózycki and Zygalski to find easier ways of decryption and build machines that could decrypt efficiently. In the meantime, the Germans kept improving the coding ability of the Enigma, so decoding messages became harder and took more time. The Poles needed to construct a machine that would find the key within minutes. Indeed, they designed and built a machine they called a “cyclometer”. The setting up of the machine took months, but then it could calculate the correct key in
Dylan Lynch of
Deputy SciTech Editor
Illustration: Sarah Larragy minutes. Zygalski came up with a method of decrypting messages using what are now called “Zygalski sheets”. These were later used by the cryptologists at Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing was working. Later the Poles built a more advanced machine called a cryptological bomb, because the ticking noise it made reminded them of a ticking time bomb. It made the decryption more efficient. The next improvement in the Enigma allowed for an unimaginable number of combinations. The Polish cryptologists had no funds to build more advanced machines to decode the new messages and in the summer of 1939, they decided to invite the French and British cryptologists to Poland and hand over all of their work. Everyone knew that Hitler intended to start a war and so knowing what the Germans were up to was very important. The work of the Polish cryptologists got to Alan Turing at Bletchley Park and this saved Turing about nine months of work. After the meeting in Poland, each team of cryptologists was given a special identification letter; the French were X, the British were Y and the Polish were Z, hence they were the XYZ. When Poland was invaded by the Nazis, Rejewski and his colleagues moved to work
in France. Later, when France was invaded, Rejewski moved to London and continued his work.
Post-war secrecy
After the war, Rejewski came back to Poland to his wife and his two children. His work on cracking the Enigma remained a secret until the late 1960s. This was because after the war, any Polish solider coming back from working in the West was constantly under surveillance. The secret government police would spy on them all of the time. If the Communists knew about what Rejewski did during the war, they would have tortured him for information. Rejewski regretted not having developed his academic career but it would have been very difficult for him to go back to University. Despite his calm and peaceful life, Rejewski, his neighbours and co-workers were constantly spied on. The letters that he and his wife wrote were read by the secret police and he was unable keep in contact with his colleagues in Poland, France or Britain. Only after he had retired, Rejewski wrote down his memoirs and gave them to the Historical Institute in Poland. In early 1970s the memoirs became public and Rejewski was visited by many journalists to tell his amazing story. However, most
of the famous books already published on the history of the Enigma were mainly based on British sources. The authors of the books barely mentioned the work of the Polish cryptologists. In one book, Marian Rejewski is referred to as a woman, because the author thought that Marian was a female name. Alan Turing did not have an easy life after the war. At the age of 39, he was involved in a relationship with a 19 year old male student and, as homosexual acts were illegal in Britain at the time, Turing was brought before court. When convicted and given an ultimatum, Turing chose to be chemically castrated instead of going to prison. He committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41 with a poisoned apple. Advanced and extremely complicated mathematical methods were finally implemented to solve the Enigma machine. The first ever computers were built. These would decode the Nazi messages in minutes hence giving a huge advantage to the Allies. The cryptologists did not win the Second World War, all of the soldiers fighting out on the front did. However the cryptologists made a very important contribution to the victory of the Allies and saved many lives.
Modern dayAtlantis to be built in Japanese oceans by 2030 The residential bubble will likely be connected to a large research facility. Aidan Murray
supply the inhabitants with fresh drinking water.
Deputy SciTech Editor
Expenses
Shimizu Corporation, a leading Japanese civil engineering and project management firm founded in 1804 in Edo (now Tokyo), has revealed plans to build Ocean Spiral, an underwater city consisting of a deep-sea underwater complex with housing for around 5,000 people in 1,150 housing units, and facilities to develop the nearby natural resources. The living quarters will be located a short distance under the water surface within a massive sphere, 500 metres in diameter, called Blue Garden. A shopping district, 50,000 square metres of offices and a 400 room hotel are also planned for the sphere. The blueprint of the project shows this residential bubble connected to a large research facility via a spiralling path. The research facility, known as the Earth Factory, will be located between 3,000 and 4,000 metres below the housing sphere, and will allow for mining of natural resources such as zinc and copper. Scientists will also explore possible methods to extract energy from the seabed.
Environment
The creators want to leave as small a carbon footprint as possible, so they are interested in using ocean thermal energy conversion to power the city by having the spiral path covered with custom generators that will harvest energy due to the differences in the temperature of the seawater. Exploiting special microbes that can convert carbon dioxide obtained from the water surface into methane will be another source of energy. In pursuing the goal of making the facility as self-sufficient as possible, fish farms will be constructed to supply food and there will be desalination technology to
Such a high-tech Atlantis does not come cheap though, and Shimizu Corp estimates the cost of their project totalling $25 billion (¤20.2 bn), which they hope to acquire through government and private industrial funding. However, even if Santa dropped several thousand sackfuls of cold, hard cash under the Christmas Tree of their corporate headquarters later this month, the science and technology required to construct Atlantis 2.0 will not be available until at least 2030, Shimizu estimates. Not disheartened by this fact, Hideo Imamura, a spokesperson for Shimizu Corp, told The Guardian: “This is a real goal, not a pipe dream. The Astro Boy cartoon character had a mobile phone long before they were actually invented – in the same way, the technology and knowhow we need for this project will become available.”
Illustration: Julia Helmes envisages creating moon bases, with interconnected hexagonal modules, constructed from concrete produced using the lunar surface. To avoid the risks associated with manned missions, Shimizu plans to use construction robots to build most of the structures. Such lunar bases would make it easier to construct yet another of their bright ideas, LUNA RING. This is an idea for lunar solar power generation, in a push to
move away from limited resources to the virtually unlimited, clean energy from the sun. Shimizu wants to build a ring of solar panels around the lunar equator to absorb the sun rays on the side facing away from Earth, and convert this energy into microwave and laser power on the lunar face nearest Earth. These would be theoretically absorbed at several facilities located around the globe and converted to energy to be used by people.
Many people have begun thinking outside the box when it comes to creating suitable places for humans to live, such as the efforts being made by Mars One to establish a permanent colony on Mars, with the first crews leaving Earth on a one-way journey in 2024.
“
The data generated will be available to our international collaborators in MND across the world.
CERN discovers new particles The newly discovered particles are six times bigger than protons. Anya Aleshko Staff Writer CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, continues to pump out fascinating results relating to the structure of the universe. The latest in a line of big breakthroughs is the discovery of not one but two new subatomic particles, -Xi_b’- and Xi_b*- , whose existence was first predicted by Canadians Randy Lewis and Richard Woolshyn in 2009. This follows the discovery of a related particle Xi_b*0 in 2012. These new particles are bound to make the particle physicist as well as the casual science enthusiast rather excited since it is hoped that these particles will help us to understand how things work at an atomic scale. The particles join the baryon family of which the more familiar protons and neutrons are already a part of.
Background
Other plans
Shimizu is no stranger to the unusual. Many of their “Proposals to Benefit Future Generations” are fairly out of this world. They are also advocates for “space tourism”, with another of their dreams being a Space Hotel. They maintain that even untrained people will be able to stay at the Space Hotel, which is a large structure consisting of an elevator shaft that is 240 metres long, with four functional elements in Low Earth Orbit. Guests would get breath-taking views of Earth, and enjoy meals and even sports under microgravity. The proposed design has 64 guest rooms, with a further 40 staff rooms, in a ring of 140 metre diameter, which rotates at 3rpm to create an artificial gravity 70 percent of Earth’s. Even further afield, Shimizu
College is to play an integral part in Project MinE, a new study that aims to establish genetic links between patients suffering with motor neurone disease (MND) and individuals who don’t suffer from the disease. Approximately 12.5% of MND cases in Ireland have an established and distinct cause, yet the remainder has an unknown but seemingly genetic cause. The worldwide project is projected to examine DNA from 15,000 individuals suffering from MND and 7,500 ‘healthy’ individuals, with 400 MND patients and 200 nonsufferers of the disease to be examined by the Irish group. The name for Project MinE was coined as the goal of the project is to “systematically dig deep into thousands of DNA profiles in order to discover the different genetic mutations that can be connected with (MND)”. Much of the research for Project MinE will be conducted in College’s newly established Academic Neurology Unit, situated in the Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pease Street. The research group will be led by Professor Orla Hardiman, who is the head of the Unit, and Alice Vajda, a research co-ordinator. “Understanding the genetic substructure of the Irish population is valuable in general as we enter an era of personalised medicine, as we expect that new drugs
for disease like MND, Parkinson’s and other related conditions will be targeted to different genetic subgroups,” Hardiman said in a statement last week. “The data generated by Project MinE in Trinity will be available to our international collaborators in MND across the world, as will theirs for us.” However, the project is still in need of public funding. On the project’s website, visitors can choose to donate an amount of their choosing or sponsor a single chromosome or even a full DNA profile. “The downside to [the ice-bucket challenge] is that people may think that we have enough money now for our research and that’s not really true,” Hardiman said in an interview with Trinity News included in this issue.
The structure of these new baryons certainly fits in well with the writer Bill Bryson’s observation in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything. “Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness,” he said . Xi_b’- and Xi_b*- are made up of three types of quarks which are called beauty, strange and down which are held together by a strong force. Due to the beauty quark, the heaviest of the three, these two new particles have are six times as bigger than the proton. Their mass also depends on their configuration. Each of the quarks has an attribute called “spin”. In Xi_b’- the spins of the two lighter quarks point in the opposite direction to the beauty quark, whereas in Xi_b*- , they are aligned. Quarks are elementary or fundamental particles, which are believed to be the building blocks of subatomic particles such as neutrons. The more famous Higgs boson, which made waves across the scientific community when it was first discovered also at CERN in 2012 after years of research, is another example of an elementary particle. The elementary particles’ internal structure cannot be measured so it is unknown if they themselves are made up of further structural particles. So, taking a neutron as an example, quarks will make up the neutron. The neutron itself makes up the atom and the atom itself is the basic building block of matter or in other words, everything that we see around us. The promising thing is that the results for both baryons Xi_b’and Xi_b*- are matching up with
predictions made before the experiments began at CERN. One of the predictions that the results have matched up to predictions based on the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). QCD is a theory that describes the nature of the strong force, which sounds like it could be something out of Star Wars, but is actually a force that acts between elementary particles and holds together quarks. QCD is a part of the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles (such as the quarks described earlier), how they interact and the forces between. In addition to this, both Xi_b’- and Xi_b*are also fitting in with the quark model, which is a classification of hadrons, of which the baryons are one of the subdivisions.
Discovery
This exciting discovery was made by a team working on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN which seeks to find out why the universe that we live in is made up entirely of matter and not antimatter, a material which is exactly like matter except that it instead has an opposite charge. It focuses on the heavy beauty quark. When matter and antimatter collide, they destroy each other, creating an enormous amount of energy. Since the Big Bang should have created equal amount of matter and antimatter, the LHCb experiment is trying to find the explanation why antimatter is practically non-existent in our universe. It does this by using the 27 km long ring that is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to accelerate particles which creates an abundance of quarks. The beauty quarks are then captured by the LHCb detector. And so, the Xi_b’and Xi_b*- subatomic particles, which may help towards explaining some fundamental questions in physics, were first detected one hundred metres below the small and picturesque French village of Ferney-Voltaire near the Swiss border. The measurements for this experiment that lead to the discovery of the subatomic particles -Xi_b’- and Xi_b*- were made in 2011-2012. Currently, the LHC is in shutdown mode and is now being prepared to work at higher energies and intense beams. “If we want to find new physics beyond the Standard Model, we need first to have a sharp picture,” said Patrick Koppenburg, LHCb’s physics coordinator. “Such high precision studies will help us to differentiate between Standard Model effects and anything new or unexpected in the future.”
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TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Sport
22 Alicia Lloyd talks football with Stephanie Roche. p.24
Balance the key for Tony Smeeth Heading up Trinity Rugby is a delicate balancing act for Tony Smeeth, DUFC’s director of rugby. Louis Strange Online Sport Editor Although originally hailing from the English West Country, Trinity’s director of rugby, Tony Smeeth, has coached at Blackrock College and further afield, having worked in the United States with the American national set-up at various levels and at different times in his career, giving him a unique overview of the game (as well as a confusing blend of accents). Having been at Trinity since 1998, we thought it was about time that Trinity News sat down with Tony to talk processdriven rugby and how balance is the watchword for everything that goes on in and around the club.
First of all, how did you end up in Ireland? I came to Ireland through Blackrock College. I was living and coaching in Seattle, and George Hook, who was doing coaching clinics there at the time, and Eddie O’Sullivan, who he was involved with, saw me coach and asked if I would ever think about coaching in Ireland. I came over, got the job [at Blackrock], and at that time [before 1995] Blackrock had about five or six Irish internationals, we were getting crowds of 5000, taking an executive train with 250 people down to Limerick. Then, the provinces started up, the club game got downgraded – not so much in standard, but as a spectacle. I applied for the job here in Trinity, and I got it.
You left Blackrock in 1998. Do you think the standard of the club game has gone down because of the structural changes? Everyone’s fitter, but the standard has gone down because you don’t have the top players in Ireland playing there, but I remember when I came over, I thought it was pretty turgid stuff, whereas now, all the teams play. I think the actual style’s better. Obviously, it’s not as good, because you’ve got the top 10% gone, playing pro, but it’s still a good league.
Having coached in the United States, do you think there is a gap in level between rugby there and here in Ireland?
Rugby in America is kinda pushing shit up a hill, to be honest. But I loved coaching there. Americans are the best people to coach, the best trainers, great attitude. But it’s not innate. Rugby’s alongside Frisbee, it’s an alternative
sport. If you’ve got a big, fast guy in America, he ain’t playing rugby, you’re playing other sports. I had 14 backs in my squad, 11 of them were foreign. For example, we had good Kiwi players over there, good Australians, good English guys, but they’re guys who haven’t made it in their own countries – you’re never gonna beat the All Blacks with rejects. If it goes professional, it will be different. If they had a New York team in the Pro-12, like the Italian teams, if they did that, they would close the gap very, very quickly.
Moving to the here and now, and despite a little bit of difficulty at the start of the season, DUFC has come back from that and had a bit of an upturn in form in recent weeks. How is it going overall for you this season? Because of the French and English clubs wanting to change the [fixture] template, everything got shunted forward – but unfortunately shunted forward really late – and we were in the [1-week training] camp on the 17th August, and suddenly we had a game on the 13th [September], rather than the first week of October. And we knew we were going to struggle, we tried to get guys back in, training unofficially since the 9th August, and we also knew about half the squad were new. Going into an All-Ireland League with just three warm up games is not enough. Unfortunately, we struggled. It didn’t look good early on, to be honest.
So what went wrong and what changed to turn it around? We just weren’t ready. Rugby is a process-driven game and we didn’t have our processes in. We struggled, losing games that we probably shouldn’t have lost. Saying that, we played a lot of the good teams early on, we were also training all over the place, and then the pitch was delayed… And it can’t be coincidence that we haven’t lost since the week we came back to College. It’s just a better buzz here, when we play here we tend to be pretty competitive.
Going forward, what other areas specifically need improving? Experience is the big thing. You’ve got ten guys playing their first senior rugby, and it’s massively physical. Right now, we’re really beat up. The processes
Photo: Kevin O’Rourke
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We run a highperformance model that is 24/7, not just training on Thursday night... If you’re not doing weight at 8am, what else are you usually doing? Sleeping.
always need refining, in rugby there’s never a situation where you think, “Ah, we’ve got it down now.” Even the All Blacks are always refining. Accuracy is probably the one thing we’ve got to work on, we’re not as accurate as we should be, in everything we do.
What are you happy with? The things you can’t coach – attitude. They’re dogs, they work hard, there’s an inner belief. You’re coming up against good players, all the time. In this league, fitness is not the issue, because they’re as fit as we are, they’ve got guys who are full-time pro. The edge that college teams generally have doesn’t “go” in this type of league.
How does the team find that balance between the importance of studying and playing? We run a high-performance model. High-performance is 24/7, not just training on Thursday night;
it starts on Monday morning. We have two conditioning coaches, plus me. How does it relay with college? It gives you structure – if you’re not doing weights at am, what else are you usually doing? Sleeping. You go to bed a bit earlier, don’t go out as much – they go out, don’t get me wrong, and I want them to do that, as long as they’re back in on Monday morning and they don’t do anything stupid. But the guys are focused. Players know that if they want to play for us, that’s the way it is.
So would you encourage your players to go out, have a good time, or would it be very strict? What kind of culture do you encourage? The culture – we want them to enjoy college. I say to them, “You need to enjoy your wins.” You can’t coach team spirit. The things that Trinity teams always have, and that we’ve had over any other place, is that there’s a real feeling – they play for the college, they play for themselves. They’re great friends and the camarader-
Reflecting on the death of a sportsman
Alicia Lloyd
terrorism, war, crime and poverty, sport is not just a form of escapism but a joy giver and a reminder that there are less trivial things to worry about. That old adage about sport acting as the playground of life is full of truth and yet also fails to take account of the fact that sport often transcends sport itself and the acts of sportsmen and women often represent so much more than the mere playing of a game, in the lives of others. The loss then of a sporting hero, joy giver to many, is a cause of heart break to those who never even knew that hero personally.
Sport Editor
Sorrow
The death of a sportsman or woman often hits us at the very core of our souls. No other people in this world have the ability to set hearts racing, make eyes glisten, unite communities and nations to the extent that a sportsman can. No other people have the ability to bring so much joy to others in a realm in which those others will have no control. Former chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren once said: “I always turn to the sports section of a newspaper first. The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.” In a modern world rife with
When such a loss comes in the form of a tragedy, our sorrow knows no bounds. The thought that Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes died while doing what he loved, at the hands of a sport giving so much joy in life, is a thought that is difficult to comprehend. They often take the best of us so young. My heart goes out to the friends, family and teammates of Phillip Hughes, but also to the thousands of people who got their joy from watching him play cricket. While Hughes was a national hero, at local level such tragedy has also been felt. A little closer to home, in my local club in Co. Leitrim a bright and brave young Gaelic footballer Philly
McGuinness passed away after receiving a blow to the head in the course of a game. Just like Phil Hughes, he died doing what he loved. Just like Phil Hughes, he died having brought so much joy to the lives of the local people, through the medium of sport. His death devastated and all but shattered the community. Tragically, these men never got the chance to hang up their boots at the end of fulfilling sporting career that should have been theirs. It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Jack Kyle did have such a chance. And yet his death, after what was a long and illustrious life still too hits us at the core of our soul. In the wake of his death, Tony Ward described Jack Kyle as to rugby and Ireland what Pele is to Brazil and football. Jack Kyle was to my mind the gentlemen whose character personifies the values of the game we adore- a paradox, considering its playing style perhaps. Despite his many laudable achievements as a rugby player and his admirable work as a surgeon however, he is said to have told his daughter that he simply wished to be remembered as a decent human being. A glimpse into the mind and integrity of such a man and an example of why a sportsman such as he should be celebrated so. Because he was so much more than a sportsman. As a rugby player, however, he
inspired awe and admiration with his deft footwork and brought joy to the nation in helping Ireland to a grand slam win in 1948. In 1977 he described rugby as having been a moveable feast all of his life. Perhaps rugby and more generally sport, is a moveable feast to all of us- even to those of us who don’t play. The joy of watching our home team win will always be with us. To many of our parents and grandparents they have Mr. Jack Kyle to thank for such a joy. My own dad had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of years ago and spent an interesting few hours listening to some of his tales of rugby in the amateur era. It is difficult to imagine nowadays that the only training undertaken by Kyle and his teammates for the Lions tour was a couple of laps around the ship. Or that before an Irish international, the only team training was a 40 minute session in Trinity before heading to Lansdowne Road.
Modern game
Despite his experience as a rugby player coming from the amateur era, in latter years he has also offered wondrous insight into the state of the modern game. He often highlighted the current issue with concussions, a worthy cause no doubt. Evidence of his being a doctor first and rugby player second perhaps. Yet he never wished
to disparage the modern game: “It is still the sport I love”. An Ulster man and a true gentlemen in every sense of the word, Mr. Kyle always said that he was proud to represent the whole of Ireland. While he played rugby in a time long before myself and my peers were born, it is unlikely that any of us have witnessed him play. Yet every Irish rugby fan knows the story of Jack Kyle- through this, the story of his sporting exploits, he will remain immortal . He was inducted into the IRB hall of fame in 2007. We should celebrate him not just for his rugby prowess however, but as a great Irish man. We will remember him as he wished - as a decent human being. I truly hope that his legacy of decency and kindness will live on and I will also hope that we see many more rugby players with his talent playing for this island, playing to give us as much joy as he gave to others back in his day. While thinking of the passing of a man such as Mr. Jack Kyle, there is a line from the Irish poem Oiche Nollag na mBan that comes to my mind: “Ag filleadh abhaile o rince an tsaoil”. I can’t help but think that this is exactly what he is doing: returning home from the dance of life. And what a dance it was.
ie’s fantastic. Other teams have that, but with us there’s a real bond. I’m going to ten-year reunions and they all talk about the mornings [gym sessions] and how it made them as a person, gave them discipline, but they also talk about the great times. You have to have a balance.
What would your own personal style of coaching, or man-management, be? It’s process-driven. It’s not faceless, but we’re not big on the “ra-ra”s before the game, it’s all systematic. It’s not about “Let’s go smash somebody!” We talk about physicality – it doesn’t matter how you play in rugby, you have to be physical, you can’t play rugby without being physical – but you’ve got to forward. You can throw it over your head, do what you want, as long as you’re going forward. Now, the Irish teams are very controlled – we keep coming back to “process-driven”, but all the top coaches are that way. I try to be process-driven, but it’s not always that way; sometimes, emot
tionally, you get involved. And I am emotional during a game, probably a bit of a head case. And I like, actually, to be up at the back of the stand – if there’s a big stand, it just removes me so I can have my little tantrums. Because you’re so involved, and at the end of the day, my week goes on how Saturday went. If we win, I have a great week. If we lose on Saturday – shite.
What are your goals for the rest of the season? We’re at the mid-way point now. I think we could go close with the U20’s at All-Ireland level. With the Seniors, a lot will depend on how healthy we stay. We really need to win our next couple of games to close the gap on the top teams. I like saying, “I just want to take care of Saturday.” It has to be one game at a time, because if you get carried away we can be awful. Win the next game.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Sport
23
Head to head: is rugby an elitist sport? Ross Gavigan Contributor
Yes
Rugby is without a doubt still an elitist sport associated with all the trappings of snobbery. While it is undergoing a huge transitional period shortly after entering the professional era, the old associations are hard to shake, perhaps due to them still being true. Professional associations are trying to shake the image and increase the participation rates in the game. The RFU is giving ten thousand pounds to state secondary schools to put towards coaching and equipment and this is sorely needed in a country where 63% of professional players attended a private school despite 93% of students attending state education. Such measures are needed to rid the game of its image that closely ties it to pre-conceived notions of class. If someone plays rugby then factors regarding their education and socio-economic class are immediately implied. I am in no way saying rugby is exclusivist but it is perceived as so, and perceptions are important in shaping the game and its participants. Consider the portrayal of rugby, both amateur and professional, in the Irish media. There is no toning down of opinion, in fact one could surmise the Brian O’Driscoll was the national saint given his coverage and the weight of his opinion, especially when rugby is not the most popular sport in the country. Come spring each year when the senior cup begins, the coverage of the Leinster senior schools cup borders on the absurd, adopting an Americanised view of school athletes with psychoanalysis and delving into great detail and analysis of prior performances. Now view this in context. This is a competition involving an extremely select few out of some private schools (often the most expensive) in the wealthiest part of the country that garners major media coverage greater than any other amateur competition. Is that not putting the sport on a pedestal? But more so it lends these players, who would already be viewed as elitist due to their education, regardless of their financial situation, a certain gravitas and importance not afforded
“
Gavin Cooney Deputy Sport Editor
Rugby still carries the whiff of aristocracy and empire, much like cricket.
to other players in other sports. This furthers the divide between rugby and other sports such as gaelic or soccer, copper fastening the common idea that rugby is for the few that can attain such lofty social heights. The one exception every dissenter makes is the unique status of rugby in its hotspots in Munster. However, Munster is, as it always is, an unusual, unquantifiable blot on the country that cannot be considered representative of the nation. In Ireland, especially, rugby still carries the whiff of aristocracy and empire, much like cricket. It has failed to become the everyman’s game and in that failure it actively deters people, giving the semblance of exclusion and maintaining the plinth it rests upon. Even in countries with greater participation rates the cult status of the players raises them to a point far beyond attainability to the average sportsperson. The status of its players and their background, the association with monetary trappings, and the feeling of exclusion rugby emits all lend towards this elitist attitude surrounding rugby in the modern era. However the many attempts to change this are to be lauded, from grassroots changes up to major policy decisions by international bodies. (Due to such policy decisions, for example, you can be certain the 2023 world cup will be in North America, not in Ireland, as Enda seems to think.) But without such actions and greater time rugby will remain an elitist sport, not only in the eyes of those who don’t participate but in the arrogance and pompousness of its exponents.
No
Once one delves beyond the superficial in this debate, there is nothing to lampoon. The main genesis of the elitism argument comes from the dominance of private, fee-paying schools in the biographies of players at thirdlevel, province and international level. The elite in this debate are loosely defined as those who can afford to pay the fees for the 56 private secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland. But to say that it is this section of Ireland’s demographic dominating the sport is wrong. Those who claim the above will point to the demographic of the national team in support of the claim. On one level it is fair to do so: the national team is the standard for the best rugby players in the country, and thus should best distill the demographic playing the sport in Ireland. It is an inexact science, but it is worthy of analysing. Of the 23 players selected for Ireland in their recent test against Australia, 14 of 23 went to public, state-funded schools. Of that 14, only Rodney Ah You (New Zealand) and Rhys Ruddock (England) were not educated in Ireland. The nine that were educated privately were Rob Kearney, Tommy Bowe, Gordon D’Arcy, Jonathan Sexton, Jack McGrath, Rory Best, Devin Toner, Jamie Heaslip and Ian Madigan. While nine of 23 (39%) cannot be said to consist of a domination, it is true to say that the percentage of privately-educated players on the Irish rugby team dwarfs the corresponding figure for the Irish soccer team. This analysis does reveals a trend. Six of the 10 Leinster players (seven of 11 if you wish to include Sexton) in the 23 were privately educated, as were both Ulster players (Best and Bowe). By contrast, none of the Munster players went to private schools. Thus a relatively sizeable portion of an Irish rugby team capable of beating one of the best teams in the world had access to a second level education many others did not. The above is an interesting study. Players educated among the private system probably do have an advantage in develop-
ment. More regulated competition, regular training each week, regular access to better facilities and high-calibre all aid their development. But to deduce that this betrays an elitist group dominating the system of Irish rugby is wrong, as the national team, while both the pinnacle and paragon of the system, does not represent the system itself. Philip Browne, CEO of the Irish Rugby Football Union, pointed out in his report at the end of the 2013/2014 season the participation numbers in Irish rugby. The numbers show that there are more people playing the game at club level than at school level. Furthermore, the report does not distinguish between private and public secondary schools, so the numbers playing relatively unrestricted by financial issues dwarf those who attend private schools. In total, 72,916 players were registered to play either Senior Men’s, Senior Women’s, Age Grade Club (an underage initiative organised by the IRFU) or Mini Rugby (most commonly Tag Rugby). Granted, the numbers playing at school level are skewed as a result of a restrictive age range, but the point is that school’s rugby does not dominate the Irish game. There are high numbers playing the club game, and the game is supported relatively well by the governing body. In his report Browne made reference to a ¤9.5 million budget to support the amateur game in Ireland. ¤2.5 million has already been earmarked under the Club Financial Assistance Scheme, providing low interest loans and/or loan interest subsidies for clubs across the country. Furthermore, the AIL Division 1 final was played in the Aviva stadium this year. The IRFU are clearly awake to the needs to service the amateur game across the country. There are opportunities for most people across the country to play rugby. Counties with low interest rates in rugby will often be due to a tradition of little historical interest in rugby rather than an elitism and exclusivity inherent in the Irish game. Traditionally, the game developed at garrison towns where soldiers once played, which goes some way to explaining the strong support for the game in places like Dublin, Limerick and Athlone. Other intangibles exist. Notional elitism, if it exists, has not
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Six of the 10 Leinster players (seven of 11 if you wish to include Sexton) in the 23 [selected for Ireland in their recent test against Australia) were privately educated. alienated the Irish public. Participation numbers nationwide are high, and the enthusiasm for the national team is as high as it ever has. While ticket prices to watch Ireland in the Six Nations and top category internationals against the big three of the Southern Hemisphere are extremely steep, the nation-wide support for the national team is enormous. It is upon that nation-wide support base that the bid to host the 2023 World Cup in Ireland was launched last week. The GAA had very few qualms in co-operating with a sporting organisation in which it is ideologically quite opposed to. While the upgrade of stadiums and ticket sales may bring the GAA increased revenue, surely if Irish rugby was guilty of charges of elitism, the GAA, an amateur organisation whose inclusivity in the twenty-first century is one of its main selling points, would be unable to co-operate with it? In conclusion, charges of rugby being an elitist sport in Ireland are untrue. High quality players are undoubtedly produced via the private school system, yet this is not the only route to success in the professional game. The game is widely played in some guise across the country, and the public are certainly not alienated by the national team. Elitists do not dominate the system. And, who knows, in 2015, the system might dominate the World Cup.
CLUB REVIEW As the term comes to a close, we catch up with Trinity clubs to find out how they’ve been faring this season. Our Basketball Club Men’s ‘A’ team picked up a hard fought win last week versus UCD in the Dublin league. They showed great spirit to overcome a 10-point deficit going into the fourth quarter, eventually grinding out a win.
This year’s Neptune Head of the River proved to be another success for DU Boat Club. In battling conditions, the Inter 4+ pennant was retained, with the two other DUBC entries coming a close second and third. On top of that, DUBC had 3 scullers finishing in the top 10 of the Inter 1x. There was a good haul at Neptune Head of River for our Ladies Boat Club with wins in Senior Coxed 8+, Senior 2x, Intermediate Coxed 8+, and Club 4+.
The DU Equestrian Club took part in their first major event, the Tetrathlon Championships, in Co. Clare. UL were the host university and the competition was held in Ennis. This year, Trinity sent an unprecedented three teams and two individuals to the competition. Overall, DUEC enjoyed an incredibly successful weekend. Each of the teams placed in the top six, and 13 out of 14 Trinity competitors won a rosette of some description. At the Derry Open, Natalie Klinck of DU Fencing Club won an individual Bronze medal in Foil, while Evie Clarke won an individual silver medal in Sabre. On Saturday in College Park,
DU Football (Rugby) Club
stormed to victory over Corinthians, extending their unbeaten run to five games.
DU Harriers and Athletics Club competed at the IUAA
Road Relay Championships at Maynooth University. The Ladies TCD ‘A’ placed 6th of the 22 teams competing, while the TCD ‘B’ team was 14th. In the Men’s competition the TCD ‘A’ placed 13th of 23 teams. Maria O’Sullivan was awarded the Athletics Ireland Female University Athlete of the Year awards on November 26th. Maria has been a leading D.U.H.A.C. athlete over the past couple of years. She was awarded a Trinity Sports Scholarship in 2013–14. The award was based solely on her achievements in university athletics during the academic year 2013–14, as judged by the Universities Committee of Athletics Ireland. Maria won the IUAA Cross-Country title in March at Cork I.T. leading home the D.U.H.A.C. ladies to retention of their cross-country title, last done in 1980 and 1981. Mary Friel (now Mary Tremble) in 1983 was the last Trinity women to take the individual title. To her cross-country title, she added the IUAA Outdoors Track and Field 3000m and 5000m titles in Waterford in April. Maria also took the Silver medal at 3000m Indoors at the Athlone Arena in February. At the Universities Road Relays held at Maynooth University in November 2013, she achieved the second fastest two mile leg of 44 athletes. She was selected to represent Irish Universities against Scottish Universities and a Scottish Athletics Select team in Grangemouth, Scotland, in June, winning the 3000m in style and contributing to the win in the Women’s match. She was TCD/ATAK Sports Star of the Month in February 2014. Last weekend, Maria came second in the Athletics Ireland Inter-Counties U23 Cross-Country Championship at Dundalk IT. Her selection has also been confirmed for the Irish U23 Women’s team to compete at the 21st European Cross-Country Championships in Samokov, Bulgaria, on December 14th. DU Karate Club have had two successful weekends back to back, retaining both the Dub-
lin Intercollegiate Cup, which was hosted by Trinity, and the O’Connor Cup, which was hosted by the Shotokan Institute of Ireland in Galway, where the club made use of the fine Galway beaches for some outdoor training. DU Sailing Club attended the IUSA Middle Easterns event in Blessington Co. Wicklow where their newer teams showed the benefits of their training by winning the Bronze fleet. Our Squash Club Men’s ‘A’ side won colours for the fifth consecutive year.
DU Ultimate Frisbee Club also had a hugely success-
ful weekend at the Indoor Intervarsities hosted by University College Cork with their women’s team coming 2nd to a strong UCC team and jointly winning the spirit award with UCD.
What to watch over the Christmas break After their third place finish in Varsities, DU Hockey Club have seven men who have received Irish Universities and Colleges’ Hockey trials. They are Steven Nolan, Robbie Clarke, Jonathan Lewis, Philip Byrne, Stephen Ludgate, Alex Simonin and Martin De Neuville. Our DU Ladies Cricket alumnus, Cecilia Joyce, was named Cricket Ireland’s International Women’s Player of The Year. In addition to this, Vera Taaffe, Anna May Whelan, Avril Dooley O’Carroll, Niamh Sweeney and Cliona McCullough from the Ladies Hockey Club were all selected for trials which will take place after Christmas, a great achievement on the back of winning the plate at Intervarsities. DU Hockey Club 1st XI also beat Mullingar away 5-2 recently to keep their 100% record going for the season.
Illustrations: Marina Bogautdinova
Say Hasta la vista to the library and greet your sofa with seasonal joy. Alicia Lloyd and Louis Strange Racing
For racing fans, St. Stephen’s Day means one thing: the King George. After the Cheltenham Gold Cup (and arguably the Grand National), the King George chase at Kempton Park is the most coveted and prestigious prize in national hunt racing, it being a key trial for the Gold Cup itself. There’ll be no Christmas dinner for the likes of Ruby and AP. They don’t care. They’re riding in the King George. Last year’s winner, Paul Nicholl’s Silviniaco Conti, looks to be the favourite with most bookmakers offering 7/2. Nicky Henderson’s Simonsig and Irish hope Champagne Fever won’t be far behind though as they bid to win what I like to call Kauto Star’s race. Keep your eye on this one; it’s usually a good guide for the Gold Cup.
A little closer to home at the traditional Christmas Leopardstown festival, worth watching is the Lexus chase on the 28th. This was a stormer last year, with Bob’s Worth and Barry Geraghty winning by a length and a half. This year he’ll have competition in the form of Gold Cup winner Lord Windermere. There are 11 UK entries. In terms of Irish hopes, it will prove interesting to see who Jonjo O’Neill will run. He’s previously won the race with the famous Synchronised (tragically killed in the Grand National) and I’d imagine he’ll go with Irish Grand National winner Shutthefrontdoor, although many are citing Holywell, a hope for the Gold Cup in March.
Rugby
Munster play Leinster at home on St. Stephen’s Day in the Pro 12. What more could you want? This derby speaks for itself. Munster are currently top of the table with
Leinster lying in 5th. Meanwhile, Ulster play Connacht. With Connacht confidence clearly high this season, it should be a compelling contest. There’s a lot of rugby to be played before these respective games but they’re vital inter pros for all teams.
Football
While you’re sitting at home on Stephen’s Day, tucking into that third turkey and stuffing sandwich of the afternoon and feeling very sorry for your stomach, just think: at least you don’t have to go outside and run around for 90 minutes. The Premier League’s finest, however, do and there are few tasty post-Christmas treats in store. Goals look to be on the cards on Stephen’s Day as some of the league’s big guns take on the struggling sides. Man City play “how many goals can we get past West Brom” and Arsenal look set to climb up the table against QPR, while West Ham
will be in for a true test away at Chelsea. For Spurs fans, the post Christmas period may not be an enjoyable one as they face Man Utd and Chelsea on the 28th and 1st respectively. Expect City and Chelsea to pull away from the rest of the pack in the three fixtures crammed between Stephen’s Day and New Year’s Day. For anyone hoping to catch a bit of golf, tennis or F1 over Christmas, they’re pretty much on a break, marking the end and beginning of their seasons. The Australian Open in Melbourne, the first tennis major of the year, starts on January 19th, though, while the Sony Open in Hawaii tees off on the 15th, so the big players won’t be away too long. There’s also plenty for NFL fans over Christmas with week 17 on the 28th, our pick being the Bills at the Patriots.
TRINITY NEWS
Tuesday 9th December 2014
Sport
24 Louis Strange meets Tony Smeeth, Trinity’s director of rugby. p.22
Shooting for the stars Alicia Lloyd talks to Stephanie Roche, the first Irish footballer to be nominated for the much coveted Puskas FIFA Goal of the Year award. to wonder if there was a certain amount, even just a pinch, of luck involved. When I asked her to describe the thought process behind executing this now distinguished goal, however, Stephanie says it was very much a case of instinct: “I’ve been playing with Aine O’Gorman, who crossed the ball to me, since I was 13. When it came to me, instinct just took over and the rest is history.” This was no fluke.
Goal
Alicia Lloyd Sport Editor The first female to win the Puskas award. The first Irish person to win the Puskas award. It has quite a ring to it. Stephanie Roche. The name now ubiquitous. Robin van Persie, James Rodriguez. Not only will you have heard these names before but you probably saw the goals for which they are nominated, both of them being scored in the World Cup. Van Persie’s diving header for the Netherlands will live on in World Cup history. Watched by millions and utterly memorable. Rodriguez’s goal, scored for Columbia against Uruguay, with impressive control of the ball on his chest and a spectacular volley, was a masterclass truly. It was voted goal of the tournament. Yet neither of these goals, played on an international stage, involved quite as much skill and nerve as that of 25 year old Stephanie Roche for Peamount United against Wexford Youths. She was perfectly daring in scoring that goal, now lauded far and wide. It was practically audacious, yet Stephanie looked in complete control of its execution. The fact is, though, that deciding a winner (by public vote) is always going to be subjective. There have been calls to arms across the country: not just to get behind Stephanie and vote because she’s Irish, but because she deserves to win. How I’d love to ask Van Persie and Rodriguez what they really think. You cannot help but marvel at Roche’s goal, at her pure, unadulterated skill. Having said that you’d have
Given the now illustrious status of this goal it is a wonder to think that it may have been destined to be forgotten. For those who don’t religiously attend Peamount United v Wexford Youths games, this goal, this piece of wondrous skill was very almost fated as merely the stuff of legend, rumour even, eventually fading into myth. As chance would have it, however, an injured Wexford Youths player was videoing the game, a fairly irregular thing to do with these matches. The football gods just couldn’t let this one go by. Fate favours the fearless after all. Just one of the many adjectives you could use to describe the playing style of Stephanie Roche. American basketball player and coach John Wooden once said: ‘’Make everyday your masterpiece.” An attitude and mindset that, as a sportsman, must make him akin to Stephanie. Her exceptional goal is evidence to the fact that compelling football, and indeed sport, can be found at any level, on any stage, on any given day. This thought prompts me to ask Stephanie if she has ever created or witnessed any other moments of footballing brilliance and genius that may have fallen under the radar. “There have been one or two that haven’t been captured but I think that’s fair to say of the amateur game all over the world,” she says. “There will always be flashes of brilliance that don’t get captured because its not on a big media stage.” Clearly that Wexford Youths Player is owed more than a thanks. Stephanie will, deservedly, find herself at the prestigious Ballon d’Or awards in Zurich this January, brushing shoulders with eminent and exalted footballers from the world’s
best teams. It’s the stuff of dreams for any young footballer. To say that she’s really looking forward to it must be an understatement. “I’m really excited to be going to the awards. I really admire all of the other nominees in all the categories so it’s a huge honour to be going. Every year I watch the highlights on television so it will be amazing to be there in person”. Will she feel in awe of such superstars? Who knows. Then again, she’s already beaten the likes of Zlatan Ibramovic, Diego Costa, Camilo Sanvenzzo and Tim Cahill, widely extolled for their best goals of the year. How does it feel? “It’s surreal,” she says. “These are players that I watch on the TV and it’s just overwhelming to think that I’ve made the top three over them. It’s a huge honour.”
Award
So what are the perceived chances of our prodigious goal score actually winning the award? If you’re a betting man or woman, the odds on Stephanie are shortening all the time, though Rodriguez remains the favourite. Stephanie’s goal is about so much more than the goal itself though. Van Persie and Rodriguez were helping their countries in a bid for the World Cup, sports’ greatest honour, scoring magnificent goals under the most intense of pressure, the hopes of an entire nation, a burden on their shoulders. Stephanie’s goal on the other hand represents an idea long oppressed and oft dismissed as impossible: the idea that a female can play sport as skillfully as men. No doubt men will seek to emulate that perfectly adroit technique used by Roche, just as women will too. These are moot points, however. This is the Puskas Award for “the most beautiful goal of the year” and on this criterion it should be judged by those with the power to do so: you and I. On this basis Roche, should be walking away from Zurich, the first female to win the award. The goal for Peamount United is not beautiful, it is exquisite. If Stephanie is to win this award she will have achieved a feat entirely unprecedented. There is really only one word to describe this story
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I’ve been playing with Aine O’Gorman, who crossed the ball, to me since I was 13. When it came to me, instinct just took over and the rest is history.
for a footballer such as Stephanie Roche. That word is fairytale. Winning will see her name added to a list including Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo. Winning will see her conferred with a fame that shall not diminish. That goal is eternal.
Fame
Life has undoubtedly changed for Stephanie since playing that game for Peamount. She now plays her football with professional club ASPTT Albi in France. Coupled with her new found acclaim, it’s been a special few months. Asked about how she is adapting, Stephanie talks about becoming a better player. Everything that has happened recently she can use heuristically to be the best that she can be for ASPTT Albi. “It’s been a bit of a culture shock, trying to adjust to life here and trying to get to grips with the language,” she says. “But it’s been great for my football. It’s brilliant to be able to train full time and being able to focus on becoming a better player.” She certainly won’t be letting any fame go to her head. Speaking of this fame, though, Stephanie has been receiving an imme-
nse amount of well-wishes, including huge names such as Gary Lineker. In typically unpretentious form however, when asked what she has been most touched by, Roche says “I’m getting a lot of positive feedback from young girls who play football and that’s really nice for me. She also mentions a special moment- “I was delighted when John Hartson analysed my goal on TV and said that it was a technically great goal.” For Roche, it’s all about technique. Does this dexterous use of technique represent the pinnacle of Stephanie Roche’s career? Is this her apotheosis? Let’s hope not. Let’s hope instead for goals even more beautiful than the last. To win this award may be to reach the apex of Stephanie’s football career so far, but personally it would mean so much more. “To win would be amazing,” she says. “I’ve been playing football since I was a child. When I was younger there weren’t very many girls teams so I had to fight to keep playing the sport that I love. To win this award would just be a fantastic honour.” The thought that an exceptional young footballer who struggled
to find and keep an outlet for her talent is now nominated to win one of the most coveted prizes in world football is fantastical, and yet it is real. The fact that winning this award is no longer a chimera but an attainable goal is pioneering and indeed sentimental. Like I said, fairytale. I wonder has she thought about what it would be like to be the first female to win the Puskas award and the significance of this for other female footballers? “Obviously it would be amazing to be the first woman to win the award,” she says. “I just hope that even my nomination will help to promote the women’s game throughout the world and ensure that it gets more media attention because there are many great players that people don’t get to see playing.” A maiden and a trailblazer then. No other nation has the ability to deal in surprises and defy the supposedly impossible in the realm of sports than this nation and it will be a great day for Irish sport if Stephanie walks away with the award in January. Either way, she deserves her place amongt the stars.